Nuclear Power and Foreign Policy (Iran, North Korea, and others)

[Ledgem]

One of the issues that's likely to become only more pressing with time is that of who is allowed to possess nuclear technology. Sanctions are levied by the international community (most, if not all, of whom already possess nuclear technology) against other countries attempting to obtain nuclear technology, regardless of the reason that nuclear technology is desired.

The primary argument against nuclear proliferation is over the fear that nuclear technology will find its way into weapons. Nuclear weaponry is more destructive than conventional ballistic weaponry, and the potential destruction that could be caused is immense. In order to prevent nations deemed unstable or untrustworthy from acquiring nuclear technology, the international community imposes sanctions against those who seek it and attempts to lightly subsidize the needs of those who do not attempt to acquire it.

I do not find the current situation to be maintainable. As society progresses its need for energy grows. Older power generation technologies are being decried as environmentally unfriendly. In many ways, nuclear power is the answer. To prevent other countries from obtaining nuclear technology for energy needs is extremely disabling to the growth of those countries. Rather than imposing a blanket ban on the technology, it seems that a better diplomacy move would be to offer to provide those countries with nuclear technology and work closely with them to ensure that it is only used for energy. Ideally an impartial third party organization goverened by international oversight would be set up for this task.

As it stands, I believe that desperation will ultimately lead most nations to obtain nuclear technology, regardless of sanctions imposed against them.

There are a number of other arguments that I have in mind favoring the somewhat controlled spread of the technology, but I'd like to inquire how others feel about the issue. What are good reasons for and against the spread or ban of nuclear technology to those countries that do not already possess it?

[mg1942]

http://www.justsickshit.com/gallery/political-cartoons/images/12-7-vanunu.jpg

[mg1942]

and they've had 'em for 30 years.

thing is, Israel is the other side of the equation... they ain't talking about erasing Iran.. they'll just do it if Iran even LOOKS like they're close... *POOF*

Meanwhile we got twits trying to make a case for Iran building a nuke pile while they're sitting on oil supplies, they only need to build non threatening oil refineries for to utilize all that oil for literally dirt cheap 'energy'. It's like a 9 year old kid that can't be trusted to not loose the TV remote making a 'case' on why he/she should get a new cell phone.

[Kamui4356]

Meanwhile we got twits trying to make a case for Iran building a nuke pile while they're sitting on oil supplies, they only need to build non threatening oil refineries for to utilize all that oil for literally dirt cheap 'energy'. It's like a 9 year old kid that can't be trusted to not loose the TV remote making a 'case' on why he/she should get a new cell phone.

Oil supplies that, in 50 years at most, will be unable to meet their current energy demands, let alone what those demands will be then. Is it any wonder that Iran, an oil exporter who would know all too well that it's easily accessable oil deposits are being depleted, is going to want to use something else for power? Also, the less oil Iran uses for domestic consumption, the more there is for export.

Maybe people should stop and think here. Is Iran's nuclear program a cover for weapons development? Perhaps, though having nuclear weapons would actually put Iran in a weaker position as simply having them invites an Israeli first strike, and they can't strike at Israel without destroying the third holiest city in islam. So why else would they want nuclear power? Could it be that they don't see their oil supplies as being sufficient for long term use?

[Tri-ring]

Let's look at facts.
Fact; whether it be nuclear weaponry OR nuclear energy, uranium needs to be refined and can not be distinguished without evaluating finished product.
Fact; Iran have been stating from the beginning that IAEA can have as many inspections as they wish.
Fact; Iran's main source of foreign income is OIL and would rather sell it at high value then to spend it domestically knowing it is a limited source.
Fact; Iran has NOTHING to gain by attacking Israel
Fact; Iran created an oil market that does not limit transaction currency to US dollar which is the FIRST of it's kind.
Fact; The US have been eyeing Iran as an obstacle (like Cuba) within ME diplomacy ever since the Iran revolution overthrowing the US puppet Pakravan regime.
Fact; Iran is a minority within the Muslim state being Shia Islam.
The answer is in front of you if you really try to understand.

[shelter]

It seems the direction of this thread thus far seems to concern Iran. All 4 posts seem to point out what I was planning to say: that the nuclear non-proliferation treaty serves a chiefly political function - and "non-proliferation" is defined by certain powerful states over lesser ones.

Although I might make an exception to N. Korea. For one thing, I'm a bit surprised that The Bush Administration has actually softened its stance on North Korea (despite North Koreans' belligerence) and has come down even harsher on Iran (who hasn't been making much noise).

So I openly wonder: who exactly defines the management & regulation of nuclear technology?

And looks like there might be a new state which will go nuclear soon - with some unusual reactions.

Indonesia’s Eco-jihad?
November 4, 2008 (Tuesday)

FROM: TodayOnline (Singapore)

EXPECT a “confrontation” between the state and lay Muslims if Jakarta moves ahead with its nuclearisation plans without securing the consent of the national council of Islamic clerics, one of Indonesia’s leading environmental activists warned recently.

Indonesia plans to build its first nuclear power plant in the earthquake-prone region of Jepara in central Java by 2010.

“If the Majlis Ugama Indonesia (MUI) does not give the green light for this project, the people may take up the cause of eco-jihad to the streets,” said Mr Fachruddin M Mangunjaya of Conservation International Indonesia. He spoke to Today recently, on the sidelines of a seminar on Islam and conservation in Indonesia held at the University of Edinburgh. The prospect of “eco-jihad” had been raised earlier by a member of the audience.


It'll be interesting to see how the international community will handle this one, considering the implications involved.

[SeijiSensei]

As difficult as it was to live with, deterrence kept the US and USSR from using nuclear weapons for nearly half a century. We've not seen a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, nor between either of those states and China, despite decades of conflict. So far military and civilian leaders appear to believe that using a nuclear weapon against a similarly-armed state is not a recipe for success on the battlefield.

The bigger problem is, of course, the growing access to high technology across the globe. To use a overworked cliche, "the nuclear genie is out of the bottle" and will never be put back. Policies based on attempting to discourage non-nuclear states from acquiring nuclear technologies seem to me to be doomed to failure. Look how well we've done with North Korea. Nor are we in a moral position to tell other nations to remain non-nuclear. The fact that we did not substantially reduce our inventory of deliverable warheads after the fall of Communism was, to me, the biggest single failure of the Clinton Administration.

Back in the seventies, one of my colleagues who taught international relations argued that the United States's best approach to nuclear proliferation was to enter into treaties with potential target nations that promised nuclear reprisals against states that used nuclear weapons against the allied target. At the time that seemed a horrifying idea to me, but over the years it makes more and more sense. Why should Iran need to fear an Israeli nuclear attack? Why not offer the Iranians (or anyone else) a guarantee that should they be attacked by a nuclear weapon the US, in concert with its allies, would retaliate against the attacker?

Obviously this approach only works if we know who the attacker is. When nuclear devices had to be delivered by bombers or missiles that was a reasonable approach. In a world where "suitcase nukes" are a real possibility, finding the attacker may not be so easy. That's why I'd still support the current international regime that tracks and manages things like fissile material and enrichment technologies. But I'd still make deterrence a significant part of any effort to thwart a nuclear war.

Tactical nuclear weapons are a whole other ball game. I don't find many compelling arguments for them militarily because of the "collateral damage" they'd inevitably spread across the globe. I also think missile defense is an extremely complicated issue. While we'd all love to be able to be made safer by technology, ABM systems are also fundamentally destabilizing in a world of offensive weapons. The Soviets feared that an effective American missile defense system would inevitably make it easier to launch a first strike attack against the USSR. "Mutual assured destruction," as crazy a notion as it seems, kept the world safe for a very long time. Once the "assured" part comes into question, the pressures for gaining the upper-hand against a nuclear-armed opponent become much stronger.

[Kamui4356]

Why not offer the Iranians (or anyone else) a guarantee that should they be attacked by a nuclear weapon the US, in concert with its allies, would retaliate against the attacker?

The problem here is we could then be put in a position to have to act against an ally or have our bluff called and lose any deterrence effect. I agree that an allied nation should be under our nuclear umbrella, however, including any nation in that would be a disaster waiting to happen.

[Shadow Kira01]

http://voanews.com/english/2008-11-10-voa17.cfm

Before the US complain other other nation's nuclear foreign policy, they should first look at themselves. When it comes to American foreign policy regarding nuclear power, shouldn't it include the trust and respect of allies? Once again, a US nuclear vehicle upsets a US ally.

If the US miscommunicates with allies and causes tension within bilateral relations, what happens if the US miscommunicates with countries like Iran and North Korea, will it start a nuclear war?

[Reckoner]

Part of the danger of giving nuclear power to other countries is not necessarily the countries themselves, but the terrorists within those countries.

[james0246]

Part of the danger of giving nuclear power to other countries is not necessarily the countries themselves, but the terrorists within those countries.

I can't help but feel that the Iranian government (or the Religious leaders, in this case), as well as a few others in that region, desperatly want to show the world that they are not as bad as America and Israel have portrayed them. Consequently, the governments would go out of their way to protect the nuclear facilities and the subsequent waste. So, terrorists do not seem like a legitimate threat in regards to the decision to support or deny the emerging nuclear infrastructure in Iran and various other nations. Now if the region was in the midst of a civil war, I would probably agree with you, but Iran is fairly stable, and most importantly, they want to be on the same stage as the "Big" nations via peaceful methods (peaceful thus far, but if AAmerica keeps jerking them around...), not just terror and destruction.

[SeijiSensei]

The problem here is we could then be put in a position to have to act against an ally or have our bluff called and lose any deterrence effect. I agree that an allied nation should be under our nuclear umbrella, however, including any nation in that would be a disaster waiting to happen.

I'd assume we'd get something in return for any nuclear guarantees; I'm not proposing a one-way street here.

I'll just add that I consider America's unwavering support of Israel's policies since the 1967 war to be one of the major obstacles to any resolution of the situation in the Middle and Near East. Even if we accept the premise that Israel is an "ally (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/08/13/EDG0SJ79501.DTL)" (a relationship not established by any formal treaty), that doesn't mean I think we should simply sit back and say it's okay for them to use a nuclear device against a third party. Unless you're willing to accept the "axis of evil" interpretation about Iran, I'd suggest re-reading the list of items that Tri-ring presented.

With the sole exception of Israel, where our foreign policy has been overt and essentially consistent for decades, the US has generally carried forward the type of duplicitous behavior in the Middle East that we associate with British and French imperialism. Remember that we've chosen to support both Saddam Hussein (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/) (directly) and Osama bin Laden (http://archive.capecodonline.com/special/terror/binladen17b.htm) (indirectly via CIA ties with Pakistan's ISI and with the help of the Saudis) when we thought it was to our advantage. In 1953 we engineered the coup (http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/history/2000/0416ciairan.htm) that restored the Iranian monarchy when American and British decision-makers feared the Mossadegh government would nationalize Iran's oil fields. Oil is a dirty substance, and it tends to stain everyone and everything it touches. Our hands are not clean in any of these countries, and the people that live in those nations know that much better than we Americans do.

Part of the danger of giving nuclear power to other countries is not necessarily the countries themselves, but the terrorists within those countries.

I'm afraid it's a bit late for that. Nuclear materials have been floating around in the world since at least the fall of the Soviet Union (Part of the danger of giving nuclear power to other countries is not necessarily the countries themselves, but the terrorists within those countries.). Added to that is the well-known distribution of nuclear materials and technology by the Pakistani weapons developer, A. Q. Khan. The North Korean (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/khan-dprk.htm) and Libyan (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/libya/khan-libya.htm) weapons programs both took advatage of Khan's largess. One bright spot that's not mentioned often enough is Muammar Qaddafi's decision to renounce nuclear weapons development. I'd be greatly surprised if terrorists don't already have access to nuclear technologies, but whether they can yet develop effective delivery systems is an open question.

Back in the 1980's when the nuclear "freeze" movement was at its height, a friend asked me if I thought I'd ever see a nuclear device detonated in my lifetime. I replied that I thought I would, but not as the consequence of an inter-state war. I believed then, and still believe today, that nuclear terrorism poses a much greater threat. If we could determine some method for deterring nuclear terrorism as effective as the methods we devised to deter nuclear war, the world would be a much safer place. Unfortunately it's a lot harder to deter non-state actors who often have little to lose and much to gain.

[-KarumA-]

Part of the danger of giving nuclear power to other countries is not necessarily the countries themselves, but the terrorists within those countries.

not just terrorist, here it is known that every couple of years nuclear waste that is highly dangerous gets transported from France to Germany, part by train and part by truck. However I heard on the news today, though it isn't anything unfamiliar that once again people were protesting against it by boycotting the transport, it has at leased been delayed for 3 hours now but to boycott a nuclear waste transport goes a little too far if it were normal protesting yes but with this a lot of people were arrested and it is more likely that they are to cause an accident that can lead to a disaster than the transport itself can crash into something. I was partly afraid that those people would cause an accident that could lead to something life-threatening (before blaming it on the government because it would be their fault though they were the idiots who caused it)

[Kamui4356]

I'd assume we'd get something in return for any nuclear guarantees; I'm not proposing a one-way street here.

I'll just add that I consider America's unwavering support of Israel's policies since the 1967 war to be one of the major obstacles to any resolution of the situation in the Middle and Near East. Even if we accept the premise that Israel is an "ally (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/08/13/EDG0SJ79501.DTL)" (a relationship not established by any formal treaty), that doesn't mean I think we should simply sit back and say it's okay for them to use a nuclear device against a third party. Unless you're willing to accept the "axis of evil" interpretation about Iran, I'd suggest re-reading the list of items that Tri-ring presented.

I agree completely on our Israel policy. It's completely counter productive. However, I think you missed my point. Let's say Israel nukes Iran. If we had such a policy we'd then either have to nuke a nation we're more or less allies with, at least in the sense that we've given them a lot of military aid, or do nothing.

If we do nuke them, then we've just shown that it's pointless to have a relationship with us, as we'll blow you off the face of the earth with no second thought regardless. If we do nothing, we're showing that we're a paper tiger and unwilling to honor our treaty obligations. Either case undermines US influence and power, and could potentially trigger an arms build up as nations who thought they were safe under the US nuclear umbrella now find themselves anything but and start scrambling for a deterrence ability of their own.

Even if such a situation doesn't happen, such a policy would be held up as an example of US arrogence and imperialism.

It's one thing to have an unoffical policy like that regarding actual allies. For example, I don't think anyone doubts if North Korea used nuclear weapons on South Korea or Japan that the US would respond. However, if you have it for every nation, you're asking for trouble. Getting away from the Israel-Iran example, what about India and Pakistan? Should the US be committed to launch if one of those countries launches a first strike on the other?

[Fipskuul]

Fact; Iran has NOTHING to gain by attacking Israel
Iran has a lot to gain actually. Just think about afterwards. If they put the blame on some crazy army personnel and execute them, and ask Europe or US to control that power so that it won't repeat again, they may solve the problem on their side without giving up much. I doubt, any leader of a western country would want to reply in the same manner, even though they may use that as a pressuring device.

That is why, you need to stop that from happening. You cannot take a risk on something like that. It takes a lot of evil courage to pull that trigger, but, we know there are people who would do that without having a second thought, and even with an excuse of following their religious beliefs.

And, if you want everyone to have access to the nuclear power without letting them develop that power themselves, then the solution is simple, even though costly. Build in a friendly nation, and distribute that energy based on an agreement that cannot be void no matter what.

[Mumitroll]

There are a number of other arguments that I have in mind favoring the somewhat controlled spread of the technology, but I'd like to inquire how others feel about the issue. What are good reasons for and against the spread or ban of nuclear technology to those countries that do not already possess it?

it's all fairly straightforward. the only reason not to spread nuclear technology to country X is if an argument can be made that country X will use it to build nuclear weapons. it's obvious that the countries which already have nuclear weapons do not want any others to obtain them. whether a country can and would use civil nuclear technology in order to build nuclear weapons has to be seen on a case-by-case basis. some are more likely to do it than others. with most of those who are likely to do it, the primary reason is simply self-defense against a potential US invasion.

reasons for spreading it - obvious as well. it's a relatively clean, efficient and major source of energy, far more environmentally friendly than fossile fuels and with a much greater energetic potential than alternative power sources like wind or solar energy.


Meanwhile we got twits trying to make a case for Iran building a nuke pile while they're sitting on oil supplies, they only need to build non threatening oil refineries for to utilize all that oil for literally dirt cheap 'energy'. It's like a 9 year old kid that can't be trusted to not loose the TV remote making a 'case' on why he/she should get a new cell phone.


for Iran it is simply a matter of having a deterrent against a US invasion. it's got nothing to do with energy or attacking the US or Israel (even as they may say otherwise) - as you say, in the short- to middle-term Iran can live on its oil, and any nuclear attack against US or Israel would be completely suicidal - which they are not.


The fact that we did not substantially reduce our inventory of deliverable warheads after the fall of Communism was, to me, the biggest single failure of the Clinton Administration.


why "failure"? it was deliberate policy. while the USSR implemented SALT and START treaties fully and disarmed substantially, drastically reducing its military budget till the 2000s, the US largely continued to increase its military spending. it is by now in absolute terms by far the most overmilitarized state on Earth, akin to the 3rd Reich prior to WWII. why? simple - military power is the most straightforward method to geopolitical control.


Why not offer the Iranians (or anyone else) a guarantee that should they be attacked by a nuclear weapon the US, in concert with its allies, would retaliate against the attacker?

that's nonsensical. the single reason that Iran needs nuclear weapons is to deter the US or Israel (which is politically the US' 51st state) from attacking it.


While we'd all love to be able to be made safer by technology, ABM systems are also fundamentally destabilizing in a world of offensive weapons.


ABM systems do not make you safer at all. it's a complete illusion. if you read contemporary military literature, the overwhelming consensus is that missile-based ABM simply does not work against modern BMs with MIRVs, randomly changing trajectories, etc. the main reasoning behind the US ABM programs, as you correctly said, is that it is a first-strike weapon against Russia and potentially China, and thus a method of political pressure. i.e., if the US launches a massive nuclear (or cruise missile) first strike against Russian/Chinese BM launch sites, the ABM in Poland, Norway, sea-borne Aegis ABM and late stage defense would be - maybe - sufficient to intercept the remaining missiles launched in the counterstrike (probably not, but the logic is that if, say, 10 warheads get through, the US will still exist afterwards).

the rest of it - orbital and airborne lasers, EMP, etc - is more science-fiction than reality. it has partially been built and tested, but in the next 50 or so years will probably still remain completely useless against a serious nuclear BM strike.


I'll just add that I consider America's unwavering support of Israel's policies since the 1967 war to be one of the major obstacles to any resolution of the situation in the Middle and Near East.


i think so too.


Even if we accept the premise that Israel is an "ally" (a relationship not established by any formal treaty), that doesn't mean I think we should simply sit back and say it's okay for them to use a nuclear device against a third party. Unless you're willing to accept the "axis of evil" interpretation about Iran, I'd suggest re-reading the list of items that Tri-ring presented.


Israel is not even an ally. it's more like a part of the US politically. it would take a while to explain why, but basically it's enough to look at the following fact: 13+% of Senate/Congress are simply Jewish (or at least were before the elections, i dont exactly know what the distribution is now), and a further ~40% have Jewish ties or are influenced by organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (for example Jimmy Carter once said it was puttting "enormous pressure" on senators and congressmen to make their policies Israel-friendly).


Our hands are not clean in any of these countries, and the people that live in those nations know that much better than we Americans do.


exactly.


I'd be greatly surprised if terrorists don't already have access to nuclear technologies, but whether they can yet develop effective delivery systems is an open question.


having access to fissile materials, making a functioning bomb, and having a missile capable of reaching the US (or even Israel - which is easier) are all different things. i'm unsure if terrorists in the common sense - Al Qaeda etc - have access to fissile materials. maybe. i'm pretty sure they don't have a working bomb (yet). why? because if they did, they would not need a conventional "delivery system" which you suggest - a missile, long-range bomber, or such. what they would probably do is park a small boat with the bomb in the haven of a large US or Israeli city and explode it. the chances of such an event are fairly high.


I was partly afraid that those people would cause an accident that could lead to something life-threatening


i think you watch too much TV :D the nuclear waste transported to Gorleben is nothing particularly dangerous, and all that fuss about it is ridiculous green propaganda. the coal plants in Germany do FAR more enviromental damage every day than all the nuclear waste ever transported to Gorleben together.

[Kamui4356]

Iran has a lot to gain actually. Just think about afterwards. If they put the blame on some crazy army personnel and execute them, and ask Europe or US to control that power so that it won't repeat again, they may solve the problem on their side without giving up much. I doubt, any leader of a western country would want to reply in the same manner, even though they may use that as a pressuring device.

Israel has nukes as well. Iran launches, Israel launches a counter attack. They won't care if it was a bunch of crazies in military or the government. Iran ceases to exist as a nation. However, Iran being an islamic nation, they would likely try to avoid hitting Jerusalem, as it's the third holiest city in Islam. It also happens to be functioning as Israel's capital, so the Israelli government might just make it through largely intact assuming no one else takes advantage of the situation.

Let's assume Iran doesn't hold back and is able to take Israel out completely in a first strike with no counterattack. Iran just nuked Jerusalem and is now embargoed by, if not at war with the rest of the islamic world.

There is simply no scenerio I can see for Iran launching a nuclear weapon against Israel that works out to their benefit.

[Mumitroll]

I agree completely on our Israel policy. It's completely counter productive. However, I think you missed my point. Let's say Israel nukes Iran. If we had such a policy we'd then either have to nuke a nation we're more or less allies with, at least in the sense that we've given them a lot of military aid, or do nothing.


lol i think you're not entirely familiar with the political realities of the world :D

Israel nukes Iran <=> US nukes Iran.


Should the US be committed to launch if one of those countries launches a first strike on the other?

obviously, no. the US isnt interested in either. so even if a full-scale nuclear war happened between the two (a scenario which is not all that unrealistic given the Kashmir issues and the current chaotic state in Pakistan - the current government will run out of money within 3 weeks last I read, and if they get overthrown, probably very radical Islamic nationalists would come to power), the US would probably not bother. although a potential course of action they may take would be to remove the Pakistani government and install someone more friendly - more so than Musharraf.


Iran has a lot to gain actually. Just think about afterwards.

lol there would be no afterwards. Iran launches a nuclear attack on Israel = Iran ceases to exist as a country. that is crystal-clear obvious to everyone involved.



That is why, you need to stop that from happening. You cannot take a risk on something like that. It takes a lot of evil courage to pull that trigger, but, we know there are people who would do that without having a second thought, and even with an excuse of following their religious beliefs.


well, you see, while I tend to agree that Israeli leaders are a bit more trustworthy than Iran's ayatollahs (although, to be accurate, the Israelis have been far more aggressive in the past), I dont think either of them are suicidal. Iran having tactical nuclear missiles capable of reaching Israel might actually be a good thing - it would create at least some kind of power balance between Arab and Israeli sides, and perhaps help to finally solve the Palestinian conflict. its about as unlikely that the ayatollah's would launch them as that the Israelis would.


Israel has nukes as well.

its not even "as well". that caricature above is pretty accurate. Israel, although it never published figures about its nuclear arsenal, is widely surmised to have 200+ 100kt+ class warheads. that is enough to turn all of Iran into a barren wasteland.

Iran on the other hand - so far - has nothing. maybe a couple low-yield warheads in the near future. while it is enough for millions of victims in Israel, it is certainly not enough to take out all of Israel's nuclear capacities. and if there's a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran, the US would in all likelihood perform a nuclear counterattack as well - with obvious consequences.

[Seifall]

The problem is that the France is the one who gave the atomic bomb to Israel and now they are like always, all european countries absolutely against the fact that Iran wants it.
So where is the justice here ?
Of course Iran is a muslim country which has a lot of precedent concerning the terrorism, so it goes without saying that imagining this country in possesion of the nuclear weapon is all but reassuring.
However at the same time, Israel is not the perfect example of the country where human rights are respected.
Giving the bomb to Israel created an enormous strategic unbalance allowing the jewish strategist to exercice a nuclear blackmail not only on their arabic neighbours but also on superpowers like United States by example.
I find it paradoxical that countries which are responsible of this time trial to obtain the nuclear weapon in the middle East want now to restrain the access at nuclear .
You cannot give the bomb to your ally and saying after " To want nuclear weapon nowadays will just rekindle useless tensions".
And I do not want to be harsh but the fact is the IAEA is just as useless as UN since they have no real powers.
It's been a long time since I do not expect anything from them. They're on the contrary, strong to say for the IAEA :" We are alarmed by X country nuclear weaponization" or for the UN : " We adopted the resolution number X" , " We absolutely condemn..." . And in majority of the case it stays as it is.
Using negociations instead of threats is more likely to have an impact on civilian populations of the countries which still don't want to stop their weaponization.
Of course concessions have to be made ( territory,civil material, petrol area...) if not, it's clearly without hope.

[Kamui4356]

lol i think you're not entirely familiar with the political realities of the world :D

Israel nukes Iran <=> US nukes Iran.

We were discussing a proposal that the US agrees to respond against any nation that launches a first strike against any other nation as a universal deterrant. I was merely pointing out a situation where the policy breaks down no matter what we do. Again with the India Pakistan thing, of course we wouldn't act. However, if we did have such a policy we'd have to, or the bluff has been called and said policy becomes worthless.

Also, while what you say may be true in the minds of some, Israel has in the past openly defied the US and did whatever they wanted. While the US has always stood behind Israel in the end, that does not mean that everything Israel does is approved or condoned by the US before hand.

[Fipskuul]

Israel has nukes as well. Iran launches, Israel launches a counter attack. They won't care if it was a bunch of crazies in military or the government. Iran ceases to exist as a nation. However, Iran being an islamic nation, they would likely try to avoid hitting Jerusalem, as it's the third holiest city in Islam. It also happens to be functioning as Israel's capital, so the Israelli government might just make it through largely intact assuming no one else takes advantage of the situation.

Let's assume Iran doesn't hold back and is able to take Israel out completely in a first strike with no counterattack. Iran just nuked Jerusalem and is now embargoed by, if not at war with the rest of the islamic world.

There is simply no scenerio I can see for Iran launching a nuclear weapon against Israel that works out to their benefit.Iran does not have to launch it from its own country. It can give the bomb to a terrorist organization who would gladly use it on Israel. And, even though you may be able to trace it back to Iran, it may be too late to prevent the initial attack.

Second, if Israel launches a nuclear attack on Iran and succeeds (in terms of the casualties), while stopping an Iran nuke, it will make things difficult for Israel. Yes, it may have prevented the attack, but, the end result would tell differently. And, you can say peace goodbye forever in that region, and it will get a lot more harder for Israeli people to live in security, if that ever happens.

I am guessing, they would assume the second scenario is a big factor Israel may decide many times before taking action, while Iran can use underhanded methods (like using al kaeda) to achieve success.

That is why Israel would never want to give Iran the opportunity to have something like that ready for their use. There is no way you can say for sure, Iran wouldn't try something that crazy.

[Seifall]

While the US has always stood behind Israel in the end, that does not mean that everything Israel does is approved or condoned by the US before hand.


United States are the older and the best firend of Israel in the world.
If US doesn't approve or condone an act made by Israel, be certain that it's because the mossad dropped by.....

[Mumitroll]

We were discussing a proposal that the US agrees to respond against any nation that launches a first strike against any other nation as a universal deterrant.


thats pointless. something like that is politically impossible.


Also, while what you say may be true in the minds of some, Israel has in the past openly defied the US and did whatever they wanted.

not really. in small regional issues, yes maybe. but even Israel's local Lebanon or Palestinian wars (not even speaking about the larger ones) were run largely with US backing. Something like Israel performing a nuclear attack on Iran is impossible without a US backing.


Iran does not have to launch it from its own country. It can give the bomb to a terrorist organization who would gladly use it on Israel.

that is possible even today, and there is no longterm way to prevent it except running a less aggressive and anti-Arab foreign policy.


That is why Israel would never want to give Iran the opportunity to have something like that ready for their use. There is no way you can say for sure, Iran wouldn't try something that crazy.

well, you know, the only ones to have actually used nuclear weapons on civilian people in history are - surprise - not islamic crazies but the US government... so that argument isnt really very valid.

[SeijiSensei]

We were discussing a proposal that the US agrees to respond against any nation that launches a first strike against any other nation as a universal deterrant.

No, that's not what I was proposing. I suggested that the United States, or a coalition of like-minded nuclear powers, sign treaty agreements with potential target states that would provide for nuclear retaliation in the event the treaty state is attacked with a nuclear weapon. As I said in my follow-up posting, I don't expect we'd extend the "umbrella" without obtaining something in return. Submission to an extensive nuclear monitoring program would be at the top of the list.

Unlike Seifall, I have more faith in the abilities of the IAEA to monitor nuclear programs. They correctly concluded (http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Transcripts/2004/cnn21032004.html) that Iraq had ended its nuclear program, and North Korea felt compelled to oust the IAEA from its facilities in 2002. The DPRK conducted its first domestic (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/nuke-test.htm) weapon test some four years later. (There's some speculation the DPRK jointly tested a weapon in Pakistan as early as 1998.) Perhaps they could have developed the weapons under the gaze of the IAEA's monitors and equipment; we'll never know.

And, unlike some other posters, I have no doubt the Israelis are perfectly capable of taking matters into their own hands without consulting with Washington. The 1982 attack on Iraq's reactor does not appear to have been decided in concert with the United States; in fact, one observer (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/1984/vanden.htm) credits growing divisions between Israel and the Reagan administration with encouraging Israel to go it alone. It appears that Israel recently mooted the question of attacking Iranian nuclear facilities; the Bush administration refused (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/25/iran.israelandthepalestinians1) to support such a move.

[Kamui4356]

No, that's not what I was proposing. I suggested that the United States, or a coalition of like-minded nuclear powers, sign treaty agreements with potential target states that would provide for nuclear retaliation in the event the treaty state is attacked with a nuclear weapon. As I said in my follow-up posting, I don't expect we'd extend the "umbrella" without obtaining something in return. Submission to an extensive nuclear monitoring program would be at the top of the list.

Unlike Seifall, I have more faith in the abilities of the IAEA to monitor nuclear programs. They correctly concluded (http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Transcripts/2004/cnn21032004.html) that Iraq had ended its nuclear program, and North Korea felt compelled to oust the IAEA from its facilities in 2002. The DPRK conducted its first domestic (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/nuke-test.htm) weapon test some four years later. (There's some speculation the DPRK jointly tested a weapon in Pakistan as early as 1998.) Perhaps they could have developed the weapons under the gaze of the IAEA's monitors and equipment; we'll never know.

Except that is exactly what we'll end up with under the proposal. The US officially commited to use nuclear weapons if a signatory is attacked, with potential signatories being nations that we don't have particualy good relationships with. Even if they agreed to give some concessions, the very nature of the agreement invites duplicity. You specificly mentioned Israel attacking Iran as an example. If the moment actually comes, either the US attacks a nominal ally, or does nothing making the treaty worthless either way. WOuld Iran really have faith that the US would carry out it's end of the bargin? It's unworkable.

[Seifall]

Unlike Seifall, I have more faith in the abilities of the IAEA to monitor nuclear programs. They correctly concluded (http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Transcripts/2004/cnn21032004.html) that Iraq had ended its nuclear program, and North Korea felt compelled to oust the IAEA from its facilities in 2002. The DPRK conducted its first domestic (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/nuke-test.htm) weapon test some four years later. (There's some speculation the DPRK jointly tested a weapon in Pakistan as early as 1998.) Perhaps they could have developed the weapons under the gaze of the IAEA's monitors and equipment; we'll never know.



I do not question IAEA's ability to find plutonium or uranium which can be used for the civil like the military.
I just find IAEA 's power other than what I just mentioned stricly non existent.
From the interview you posted I just found this quote , pretty telling :

Dr. ElBaradei, thanks very much for joining us.

You remember those days very, very vividly. You were sitting at the U.N. Security Council that day when Colin Powell made his statement. What was going through your mind as you saw war clouds develop?

MOHAMED ELBARADEI, DIRECTOR GENERAL, IAEA: Well, clearly, Wolf, the nuclear file was somewhat different from chemical and biological. With regard to the nuclear file, we were pretty convinced that we haven't seen really any evidence that Iraq resumed its nuclear weapon program, because we knew we dismantled that program in 1997, and our focus was to see whether anything has been resuscitated between '98 and 2002.

We didn't see that. As Hans was mentioned, there was a question of the uranium importation, there was a question of that tubes but these two stories we clearly realized that they did not support the conclusion that Iraq was restarting its nuclear weapon program.

With regard to chemical and biological - and that was Hans Blix fight - I think the situation was more complicated, because, although there was not much good intelligence, the presumption - and I think that was also shared by Hans, shared by many members of the Council - that because Iraq had them before, because it had accused them before, and there was no record of either destruction or production, there was this nagging question: Do they still have them?

And, frankly, because there was - we were dealing with a regime that was brutal, that had used chemical weapons in the past, the level of tolerance was very low, and the level of suspicion was extremely high. And - I think that's how we should look at - the question in context, frankly, yes.

BLITZER: You remember what Dick Cheney said, the vice president of the United States, only days before the war started. And I'll put it up on the screen. He said: "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei, frankly, is wrong. And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency in this kind of issue, especially where Iraq's concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what Saddam Hussein was doing."

When you heard Dick Cheney say that a year ago, what were you thinking?

ELBARADEI: I was thinking that he was not really seeing what I see on the ground. I haven't seen anything on the ground at that time that support Mr. Cheney's conclusion or statement, so - and I thought to myself, well, history is going to be the judge.

BLITZER: Well, history has been the judge to a certain degree .




History has to be the judge in a certain degree ? :twitch:
So even if the IAEA knew Iraq was free of nuclear weapons, they couldn't do more than that ?
Aren't they supposed to be an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for military purposes. Though established independently of the United Nations under its own international treaty (the IAEA Statute), the IAEA reports to both the General Assembly and the Security Council. ?
History is going to be the judge ? The director of the IAEA who clearly claims there is no use ? The UN which like always just made a resolution .
2003 clearly discredited both UN and IAEA. El Baradei, Kofi Annan, they were labeled as vital man who were influential, look at what happenned in Iraq and Rwanda. This was a tragedy.

[Mumitroll]

And, unlike some other posters, I have no doubt the Israelis are perfectly capable of taking matters into their own hands without consulting with Washington. The 1982 attack on Iraq's reactor does not appear to have been decided in concert with the United States; in fact, one observer credits growing divisions between Israel and the Reagan administration with encouraging Israel to go it alone. It appears that Israel recently mooted the question of attacking Iranian nuclear facilities; the Bush administration refused to support such a move.

there is a major difference between 1) attacking a single target with conventional guided missiles, 2) launching a war, and 3) using nuclear weapons. while 1) has indeed probably been done by Israel without full consent of the US, 2) has not, most definitely. and 3) is unthinkable without US approval.


I just find IAEA 's power other than what I just mentioned stricly non
existent.

that is correct. the IAEA does not have any real executive power to enforce anything on anyone. it is merely a supervisory agency.


2003 clearly discredited both UN and IAEA. El Baradei, Kofi Annan, they were labeled as vital man who were influential, look at what happenned in Iraq and Rwanda. This was a tragedy.

i dont think 2003 discredited either. rather, i think the US - or more precisely the Bush administration - discredited itself in trampling over both the IAEA and the UN. if you are not brainwashed by Western media (or know how to tell propaganda from facts), the picture is really quite clear. the US has overstepped whatever international law there is repeatedly and clearly - already 1999 was a blatant example, and 2003 was yet another - and it ignored whatever the IAEA has said, with open lies as the Cheney one you've cited - even although the IAEA statements proved perfectly correct after extensive subsequent examination.

all that says is that the US does not want a world that is international and run with mutual consent of the leading nations. the US wants a US-controlled world, to the utmost extent possible. the whole rest of the US foreign policy easily follows from this.

[Kamui4356]

there is a major difference between 1) attacking a single target with conventional guided missiles, 2) launching a war, and 3) using nuclear weapons. while 1) has indeed probably been done by Israel without full consent of the US, 2) has not, most definitely. and 3) is unthinkable without US approval.
Yes, there is a major difference, but it's not the only example. Israel also sold advanced weapons to China until the US threatened to stop arms sales. Further, Israel has stated that they would attack Iran if they were close to developing nuclear weapons with or without US approval. The US would never give Israel approval to launch a nuclear strike, so it's highly unlikely they'd even ask.


all that says is that the US does not want a world that is international and run with mutual consent of the leading nations. the US wants a US-controlled world, to the utmost extent possible. the whole rest of the US foreign policy easily follows from this.
Every nation wants the most influence possible though. The US is simply in a position to have a lot more than most other nations. It's nothing unusual in world affairs.

[Tri-ring]

Iran does not have to launch it from its own country. It can give the bomb to a terrorist organization who would gladly use it on Israel. And, even though you may be able to trace it back to Iran, it may be too late to prevent the initial attack.


Some points, an Atomic device at it's infant technological state weighs somewhere around two metric tonnes.
Miniturization of the bomb can only be started after knowing how much material can be pressurized into a cake without going critical meaning you need past data or do it through try and error.
The present scud type missle can not deliver two tonnes.
An ill shielded bomb will light up like a shining star to a satellite searching for gamma ray radiation.

[Mumitroll]

Yes, there is a major difference, but it's not the only example. Israel also sold advanced weapons to China until the US threatened to stop arms sales. Further, Israel has stated that they would attack Iran if they were close to developing nuclear weapons with or without US approval. The US would never give Israel approval to launch a nuclear strike, so it's highly unlikely they'd even ask.


Israel will not do a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran. Ever. they know just as well as everyone else that it would be equivalent to signing the death note for themselves. what they might do is a conventional attack on some of Iran's nuclear/military objects. that is a lot less risky and potentially does not require US approval.


Every nation wants the most influence possible though. The US is simply in a position to have a lot more than most other nations. It's nothing unusual in world affairs.

yeah. the problem is that the US position since the collapse of the USSR is one of unprecedented military dominance. never before in history, a nation was able to largely control the whole world by force. neither did a nation ever before have so much hatred against itself. and nor did ever before the people on the other side have nuclear weapons or the potential to obtain them. which is why IMHO the contemporary US foreign policy is nothing short of suicidal. it's a walk on the brink of an abyss. in my personal opinion (and it's a very informed opinion, too), it will all end with a mushroom cloud over one of the large US coast cities.

[Kamui4356]

Israel will not do a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran. Ever. they know just as well as everyone else that it would be equivalent to signing the death note for themselves. what they might do is a conventional attack on some of Iran's nuclear/military objects. that is a lot less risky and potentially does not require US approval.

If Iran had nukes, and Israel was convinced Iran was planing a strike, they might very well use them. Those are some big ifs though. Also, since you pointed out that Israel would possibly launch a conventional attack that "potentially does not require US approval" you'd be willing to conceed that the policies of Israel are not dictated by the US?


yeah. the problem is that the US position since the collapse of the USSR is one of unprecedented military dominance. never before in history, a nation was able to largely control the whole world by force.
I guess you've never heard of Great Britain.

neither did a nation ever before have so much hatred against itself.
What? Are you saying American hates itself, or other people hate America? :confused:

and nor did ever before the people on the other side have nuclear weapons or the potential to obtain them.
Now I know you've heard of the Soviet Union, since you mentioned them. Last I checked they had lots of nukes.

which is why IMHO the contemporary US foreign policy is nothing short of suicidal. it's a walk on the brink of an abyss. in my personal opinion (and it's a very informed opinion, too), it will all end with a mushroom cloud over one of the large US coast cities.

How exactly are terrorists going to get their hands on this nuclear device? Nuclear weapons are not something you can make in a mountain cave. They require a lot of high tech infrastructure to refine the nuclear material. Only a nation or possibly a huge multi-national coorporation would have the means. The only way terrorists could get one is if someone gave it to them. There aren't exactly a lot of candidates for that either. Their best chance would be Pakistan, but if that happens it means extremists have already taken over the country, and the US would probably be keeping as close a watch as possible on their nukes.

Also, I'd point out that it most certainly wouldn't end with a mushroom cloud over a US city.

[Irenicus]

yeah. the problem is that the US position since the collapse of the USSR is one of unprecedented military dominance. never before in history, a nation was able to largely control the whole world by force. neither did a nation ever before have so much hatred against itself. and nor did ever before the people on the other side have nuclear weapons or the potential to obtain them. which is why IMHO the contemporary US foreign policy is nothing short of suicidal. it's a walk on the brink of an abyss. in my personal opinion (and it's a very informed opinion, too), it will all end with a mushroom cloud over one of the large US coast cities.
Yeah, very informed. :rolleyes:

We could like, start with the whole the USA is the most hated nation in history and go from there. Point: Nanjing massacre riled up people a lot more than McDonalds-in-your-backyard did. So are countless other "local" atrocities. Another point: blind anti-Americanism (whereby everything American sucks, as your opinion seems to demonstrate here) is not the prevailing diplomatic stance of most, if not all, European states, no matter what the prevailing public opinion is.

Oh, and yet another hint: much of the USA's hegemony in world politics is based on its economic strength and its system of alliances as well, not just some sort of singular, oppressive "force." The Marshall plan and NATO ensure a coalition of "Western/First World" states, for one, and the Bretton Woods Conference was a landmark economic conference that established the central role of the USA in international currency until Nixon abolished it and it certainly was not something done by having American soldiers pointing guns at the British Monarch or some such.

And finally: mushroom clouds? Newsflash: the Cold War ended almost two decades ago. Nuclear proliferation is a touchy, complex affair, with many viewpoints to take on, but simplifications like this don't help out the debate.

[mg1942]

Fact; Iran has NOTHING to gain by attacking Israel

That is a matter of perspective. Suppose Iran does build nukes and obliterates Israel. Just how high on the moral ladder will the Persians stand with their Arab brothers for being the ones to finally destroy Israel?

[Kamui4356]

That is a matter of perspective. Suppose Iran does build nukes and obliterates Israel. Just how high on the moral ladder will the Persians stand with their Arab brothers for being the ones to finally destroy Israel?

Not high at all, since they blew up the city Muhammad is believed to have ascended to heaven from in the process.

[Fipskuul]

Not high at all, since they blew up the city Muhammad is believed to have ascended to heaven from in the process.If you consider the presumed fact that at one time Saudis were actually planning to destroy Kaaba, around the time they were showered with the British gold, you can see, those things do not matter a lot, when it comes to bigger gains. Islamic world is full of views like that.

[mg1942]

Not high at all, since they blew up the city Muhammad is believed to have ascended to heaven from in the process.


I thought Muhammad died in Medina.....kinda hard for him to die on the Arabian Peninsula and then ascend to heaven from a Jewish city.......

The Dome of the Rock, being among a complex of buildings on the Temple Mount, (the other being the Al-Aqsa Mosque) is one of the holiest sites in Islam. Its significance stems from the religious beliefs regarding the rock at its heart. According to Islamic tradition, the rock is the spot from where Muhammad ascended to Heaven accompanied by the angel Gabriel.

the Dome is in Jerusalem.

[Mumitroll]

If Iran had nukes, and Israel was convinced Iran was planing a strike, they might very well use them.


no. "planning a strike" is not a justification for a preemptive nuclear attack. Israel would be eradicated after that, by whatever means available to Arab states.


Those are some big ifs though. Also, since you pointed out that Israel would possibly launch a conventional attack that "potentially does not require US approval" you'd be willing to conceed that the policies of Israel are not dictated by the US?

how should I best put it... Israel is like an attack dog which is being kept at a short leash. it cannot do anything major by itself, but it can bite its neighborhood every now and then. ok as an analogy? :D

although tbh what that analogy is missing is the backlink from the dog to the master.. which is also substantial in this particular case.


I guess you've never heard of Great Britain.

the British Empire was never even close. or did it have a fleet of nuclear aircraft carriers capable of bombing almost every country in the world into the ground within months?


What? Are you saying American hates itself, or other people hate America?

other people. the US is currently at a historical low in terms of worldwide esteem. I think the recent Gallup polls resulted in an estimated 80% of the world disliking the US. thats probably realistic too - here in Germany i'd say its more like 90%. in Russia it's probably around 95%. and in Iran or Iraq... lol.


Now I know you've heard of the Soviet Union, since you mentioned them. Last I checked they had lots of nukes.

i meant pre-US. aka 19th century or before.


How exactly are terrorists going to get their hands on this nuclear device? Nuclear weapons are not something you can make in a mountain cave. They require a lot of high tech infrastructure to refine the nuclear material.

you can theoretically obtain fissile materials today, maybe with large bribes etc. in any case I am not one to guarantee that its impossible.


Also, I'd point out that it most certainly wouldn't end with a mushroom cloud over a US city.


the US foreign policy as of today would probably end, or at least become much more moderate. there would be nobody to bomb in revenge, so they would have to concede millions of victims for nothing. ok, they might find someone - Iran for example - but a onetime occurrence would probably be enough to radically reevaluate the risks. it would have to be a nuclear bomb though - 9/11 wasnt enough yet.


We could like, start with the whole the USA is the most hated nation in history and go from there. Point: Nanjing massacre riled up people a lot more than McDonalds-in-your-backyard did.

not really. Nanjing is basically known in China and a few more SE countries. so maybe 2 billions (if we - unrealistically - say that everyone in SE Asia disliked JP as a result). if we take the above Gallup estimates as a basis, we've got around 4 billion people disliking the US today.

also, Nanjing casualties are estimated at around 100,000-200,000. the two US bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than that. i dont even mention the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden.


Another point: blind anti-Americanism (whereby everything American sucks, as your opinion seems to demonstrate here) is not the prevailing diplomatic stance of most, if not all, European states, no matter what the prevailing public opinion is.


lol do you realize what you just said? yes an anti-US policy may be not the prevailing stance of EU states... but they're, coincidentally, democracies. so a government that doesnt represent its people will ultimately get busted. and some do. yes, you may say that in many EU countries all the major parties basically run a US-subservient course (for many reasons), contradicting the will of the vast majority of their own population.... but all that you're admitting by that is that you're supporting tyranny and stuff being forced on people against their will.


Oh, and yet another hint: much of the USA's hegemony in world politics is based on its economic strength and its system of alliances as well, not just some sort of singular, oppressive "force."


that was the case previously, in the 50s-80s. nowadays, not anymore. the US economy is not competitive anymore, nearly anywhere. the few sectors that remain are basically: arms, aerospace, computers/software, agricultural equipment, and biotech. just about everything else, the US economy works for its inner market and is not competitive internationally.



And finally: mushroom clouds? Newsflash: the Cold War ended almost two decades ago.


i think you're also not entirely in the clear of the political realities of the world... the Cold War never ended. while the USSR might have unilaterally ended it on its side, and reduced its BMs, warheads, and military budget, the US never did. it just kept going on much in the same way. and since Russia nowadays is returning back on the arms race track - see recent Russia-Georgia war - it's basically Cold War all over again.

to quote one of the oldest and most experienced German journalists - Peter Scholl-Latour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scholl-Latour) - when asked "When is the new Cold War coming?" at a political roundtable earlier this year he said "Coming? It's already here."

[Lathdrinor]

Whether the US is the most liked or disliked country depends on the period, but it's truly flattering, either way, that the entire world cares enough to boo the Iraqi invasion and cheer Obama's election.

Them's the kicks for being a superpower.

Oh, and as for the most hated (as opposed to simply disliked) country in history, I'd think Nazi Germany would take the cake. You just don't get away with committing genocide against white people, no sir.

[Kamui4356]

If you consider the presumed fact that at one time Saudis were actually planning to destroy Kaaba, around the time they were showered with the British gold, you can see, those things do not matter a lot, when it comes to bigger gains. Islamic world is full of views like that.

Perhaps, but add something like that to the tensions between sunnis and shiites and you'll have problems.

I thought Muhammad died in Medina.....kinda hard for him to die on the Arabian Peninsula and then ascend to heaven from a Jewish city.......

Note I said ascended to heaven, not die. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isra_and_Mi'raj Apparently his trip to heaven wasn't one way.

no. "planning a strike" is not a justification for a preemptive nuclear attack. Israel would be eradicated after that, by whatever means available to Arab states.

Justification? There is no justificaion for a nuclear strike AT ALL. That doens't mean it could never happen. If Israel has intelligence that Iran is about to launch a nuclear strike, they will launch a premptive strike.

As for the Arab states, the problem there is they would have no means to eradicate Israel unless an Iranian strike took out a good chunk of the Israeli military. The surrounding arab states aren't exactly shining examples of military compotence. They failed to beat Israel with a unified attack before, and the balance of power has shifted in Israel's favor since then.



how should I best put it... Israel is like an attack dog which is being kept at a short leash. it cannot do anything major by itself, but it can bite its neighborhood every now and then. ok as an analogy? :D

What would you define as major? Israel has conducted military operations without US approval. Even in the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, they used cluster bombs against civilian population centers after the US told them not to. To which we responded by saying don't do it again and selling them more bombs. Sure the US always supports them after the fact, but that does not mean they conduct everything with the blessing of the US. They don't have to, since we've always come around.

although tbh what that analogy is missing is the backlink from the dog to the master.. which is also substantial in this particular case.

Which is why the US has committed so many troops to the defense of Israel over the years. Oh that's right, we haven't. Yes Israel is a US ally, but they're not a close ally. We sell them weapons and tell them not to do stupid things with them, which they do anyway, so we foolishly sell them more. We don't sign off on every action they take though.


the British Empire was never even close. or did it have a fleet of nuclear aircraft carriers capable of bombing almost every country in the world into the ground within months?

It did control 1/4 of the landmass of Earth. The Royal navy ruled the seas for hundreds of years. Sorry, but that's more than the US can claim. Sure they didn't have nukes, but they seemed to do fine without them, for the most part.



other people. the US is currently at a historical low in terms of worldwide esteem. I think the recent Gallup polls resulted in an estimated 80% of the world disliking the US. thats probably realistic too - here in Germany i'd say its more like 90%. in Russia it's probably around 95%. and in Iran or Iraq... lol.

Disliking the US is not the same as hating the US. There's a big difference between having an unfavorible attitude towards US policies and chanting death to America. While opinions of the US have been declining in recent years, that's likely directly attributable to Bushy and his policies. Also your numbers are inflated.


i meant pre-US. aka 19th century or before.

That's because nuclear weapons didn't exist yet. That still didn't stop people from killing each other with ruthless efficency, or from burning cities to the ground though.

you can theoretically obtain fissile materials today, maybe with large bribes etc. in any case I am not one to guarantee that its impossible.
Right, theoretically, with large bribes. You do realize how tightly controlled such materials are, correct?


the US foreign policy as of today would probably end, or at least become much more moderate. there would be nobody to bomb in revenge, so they would have to concede millions of victims for nothing. ok, they might find someone - Iran for example - but a onetime occurrence would probably be enough to radically reevaluate the risks. it would have to be a nuclear bomb though - 9/11 wasnt enough yet.

You don't seem to understand the American psyche. Look at what the US did after 9-11. Now imagine that, only the US that no longer gives a shit about international law or avoiding civilian causalties. Remember, the Bushy adminstration did present a weak case for the invasion of Iraq. We at least played lipservice to international law, so that's not the kind of situation I'm talking about.


not really. Nanjing is basically known in China and a few more SE countries. so maybe 2 billions (if we - unrealistically - say that everyone in SE Asia disliked JP as a result). if we take the above Gallup estimates as a basis, we've got around 4 billion people disliking the US today.

Funny I learned about it in school. Also once again, your numbers are inflated.

also, Nanjing casualties are estimated at around 100,000-200,000. the two US bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than that. i dont even mention the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden.

That's of course not mentioning the rest of China, let alone the other areas Japan occupied. I could cite some numbers, but I don't want to play your who killed the most people game. World War II was a total war where the bombing of civilian population centers was par for the course. Good that you don't mention Dresden though, since the US wasn't the one who did the main fire bombing. You can thank the Royal Airforce for that one.


lol do you realize what you just said? yes an anti-US policy may be not the prevailing stance of EU states... but they're, coincidentally, democracies. so a government that doesnt represent its people will ultimately get busted. and some do. yes, you may say that in many EU countries all the major parties basically run a US-subservient course (for many reasons), contradicting the will of the vast majority of their own population.... but all that you're admitting by that is that you're supporting tyranny and stuff being forced on people against their will.

See the thing is, while they may not like current US policy, that is not the same as hating the US. The people may support a distancing from the US, but they most certainly do not support a severing of ties or anything extreme like that.


that was the case previously, in the 50s-80s. nowadays, not anymore. the US economy is not competitive anymore, nearly anywhere. the few sectors that remain are basically: arms, aerospace, computers/software, agricultural equipment, and biotech. just about everything else, the US economy works for its inner market and is not competitive internationally.

You might be more convincing if those weren't all huge business sectors you mentioned, if there wasn't a McDonalds in or near your city, if there weren't any US movies playing in your theaters, if the US auto industry didn't own quite a few european companies, and if you weren't typing that on a computer running software from a US company. ;)



i think you're also not entirely in the clear of the political realities of the world... the Cold War never ended. while the USSR might have unilaterally ended it on its side, and reduced its BMs, warheads, and military budget, the US never did. it just kept going on much in the same way. and since Russia nowadays is returning back on the arms race track - see recent Russia-Georgia war - it's basically Cold War all over again.

Except that you're flat out wrong there. The US reduced its military a lot since the cold war. We did in fact reduce our nuclear arsenal in accordance to the START treaty. Also the Soviet Union didn't simply cut spending on it's military, it no longer exists as a nation.

to quote one of the oldest and most experienced German journalists - Peter Scholl-Latour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scholl-Latour) - when asked "When is the new Cold War coming?" at a political roundtable he said "Coming? It's already here."
Great that's one guy's opinion. If you look you can find many more who disagree. What we're seeing in Russia is most certainly not a return to their cold war stance.

[Fipskuul]

Perhaps, but add something like that to the tensions between sunnis and shiites and you'll have problems.Even though they may have tensions, they (the ones near the middle east, at the least) unite at one ideal. Both sides would prefer an erased Israel over many things, no matter how outrageous it may sound.

Israel could have done more to erase those fears, after all that will make them feel unconstrained. But, maybe US has more part in that compared to Israel. US's plans for the region actually prevented that to be developing, friendly relationship, that is. If US wouldn't have supported dictatorship regimes at the region, for a very long time, the ordinary people in that region wouldn't have to feel locking his mind to the outside world (that is still going on). US was afraid losing the unconditional support of those countries in the region, but, if they were a true friend of Israel, they would have done much better. So that brings me to my final point, are they really friends? Or, is there some bigger plan that is going on behind many secret doors, that has allowed Israel to accept the ongoing state within the middle east.

We will see how Obama will handle the situation.

[yezhanquan]

Oh, and as for the most hated (as opposed to simply disliked) country in history, I'd think Nazi Germany would take the cake. You just don't get away with committing genocide against white people, no sir.

That ties in with the construction of "Jews" as "white". That wasn't always the case in history.

The way I see it, the world just has to live with nuclear weapons. The possibility of unlearning this subset of human knowledge is close to zero.

[Mumitroll]

Whether the US is the most liked or disliked country depends on the period, but it's truly flattering, either way, that the entire world cares enough to boo the Iraqi invasion and cheer Obama's election.


well, the first is a major event indeed. it's not every day that someone performs a large-scale invasion of a sovereign country ignoring the UN and world opinion, especially with such obvious economic motives - oil control - as in Iraq.

the second is a media creation. even in Germany, if you ask people around, the majority is rather indifferent to US elections. the people who are interested were obviously mostly pro-Obama, since McCain is regarded as a continuation of Bush - who is in the world's opinion the worst US president ever. in Russia or China, the large majority doesn't care at all.

partially the "Obama-mania" is also due to his charisma. he's certainly a good speaker and has a good PR team, much better than any recent president or presidential candidate. coincidentally, Hitler also was a good speaker and had a good PR team :)



Oh, and as for the most hated (as opposed to simply disliked) country in history, I'd think Nazi Germany would take the cake. You just don't get away with committing genocide against white people, no sir.


well - white people arent the majority in the world, you know. US committed mass genocide against the Vietnamese population (both South and North), killing between 2 and 5 million (depending on source). it never paid any reparations or even apologized. in another completely clear case, the World Court ruled the US guilty of aggression and genocide in Nicaragua and ordered it to pay $2 billion in reparations already in 1986. The US flat out ignored that and continues to do so till today. you dont hear much about that in the media, do you? but the people who live there haven't forgotten it at all.



Justification? There is no justificaion for a nuclear strike AT ALL. That doens't mean it could never happen. If Israel has intelligence that Iran is about to launch a nuclear strike, they will launch a premptive strike.


well, just look into history. teh justification for the two nuclear strikes performed historically was to "save our youngsters" (quote Truman). it is regarded as a valid and correct decision up until today officially - the US also never apologized for that. even although it was a horrible, deliberate war crime - the bombs were dropped not on military targets (of which there were plenty), but on large cities, deliberately killing many thousands of women, children, etc. the Hiroshima bomb (I was there last year) was dropped merely a few hundred meters away from the city hospital.

and no Israel will not do a preemptive nuclear strike. it's suicide. what they would do if they had "information" on Iran "planning" a strike would be an air raid with conventional weapons, perhaps also cruise missiles.



As for the Arab states, the problem there is they would have no means to eradicate Israel unless an Iranian strike took out a good chunk of the Israeli military. The surrounding arab states aren't exactly shining examples of military compotence. They failed to beat Israel with a unified attack before, and the balance of power has shifted in Israel's favor since then.

if Israel were to attack Iran preemptively with a nuclear strike, all chance for any reconciliation would be lost forever. no Muslim would be content until Israel were destroyed completely, and earlier or later it would happen - latest simply when other Arab League states would obtain nuclear weapons. from a purely military standpoint, Israel ultimately fights a losing battle - they are merely around 8 million against half a billion Muslims even in the Arab League states (and more outside of it). that is occasionally admitted even by fairly high-ranking Israeli officers. I agree about the Arab states being largely bad at war, but even with that, the 1973 Yom Kippur war went far worse for Israel than the previous 1948 and 1967 wars. yes, they can so far survive by drafting women and receiving immense military support from the US, but if there were another major war in the near future, Israel would probably no longer be able to win conventionally and would have to resort to nuclear weapons.


What would you define as major?

launching the Six-Day War, nuclear attack on Iran, etc. the invasion of Lebanon, while also obviously a war crime etc, was arguably not so "major". but even there - it was not just supported by the US, there is strong evidence that the Bush administration actually exerted pressure on Ehud Olmert to launch it:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/21/060821fa_fact
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=744043
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/739976.html


Israel has conducted military operations without US approval. Even in the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, they used cluster bombs against civilian population centers after the US told them not to.

this is a minor technical detail. akin to the attack dog biting someone in the knee instead of the ankle where its master ordered it to.


Which is why the US has committed so many troops to the defense of Israel over the years. Oh that's right, we haven't.

the US has committed more military and financial assistance to Israel than to any other country in the world, ever.

http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/israel050602.html


It did control 1/4 of the landmass of Earth. The Royal navy ruled the seas for hundreds of years. Sorry, but that's more than the US can claim. Sure they didn't have nukes, but they seemed to do fine without them, for the most part.


the extent of control possible then was far from what is possible today. today it is possible to control a place by many means, and having a military presence there is merely one (and if you check http://www.ppu.org.uk/pm/US-military-bases-2001-03.jpg you'll see that it's not much less than the territory of the British Empire). other means of control are things like the IMF or NAFTA, military and economic aid, proxy governments (as in the Ukraine, Georgia, etc).

also, the speed with which a country can be punished for disobedience is much higher today than it was back then, for obvious technical reasons. which is also one of the reasons why the US has made so many military interventions since WWII - a lot more than the British Empire in any similarly long period.

overall it is really a simple case for any historian to prove that US influence today is unprecedented, way higher than that of the British or Roman Empire. just read a bit on that, you'll easily find sources.



Disliking the US is not the same as hating the US. There's a big difference between having an unfavorible attitude towards US policies and chanting death to America. While opinions of the US have been declining in recent years, that's likely directly attributable to Bushy and his policies. Also your numbers are inflated.


the 80% number is from a poll i've seen already a few years ago. 90% for Germany and 95-99% for Muslim places and Russia is something I can estimate from personal experience.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7708893.stm

there are also some polls with different numbers, more favorable for the US, like http://pewglobal.org/commentary/display.php?AnalysisID=1019 (coincidentally, with figures by teh US Department of State). i dont think those are realistic though.



That's because nuclear weapons didn't exist yet. That still didn't stop people from killing each other with ruthless efficency, or from burning cities to the ground though.


the scale was different. nobody has ever killed more people on a single day than the US.



Right, theoretically, with large bribes. You do realize how tightly controlled such materials are, correct?

yes. in the US, UK, or Russia. in Pakistan? i wouldnt bet on it.


You don't seem to understand the American psyche. Look at what the US did after 9-11.

well, you see, earlier or later that "American psyche" (I'd rather call it "neocon psyche") will change. the latest would be after all major US cities are destroyed and tens of millions are dead - i.e. a large-scale nuclear war. a local nuclear explosion destroying a single city might or might not be enough. dont know for sure.


Now imagine that, only the US that no longer gives a shit about international law or avoiding civilian causalties.

thats already largely the case today.


Remember, the Bushy adminstration did present a weak case for the invasion of Iraq. We at least played lipservice to international law, so that's not the kind of situation I'm talking about.

the "case" was completely laughable, and everyone not-brainwashed knew it. the one and only reason for this war is geopolitical control of the region with world's 2nd-largest oil resources.



Funny I learned about it in school.

well, what else did you learn in school? probably you also learned that Japan provoked the US into dropping nuclear bombs on its cities, that the US won WWII, that space exploration started when Americans went to the moon, etc?

what you probably didnt learn is that the US killed far more civilians in Vietnam than Japan did in Nanjing - a number overall comparable to all of Japan's war crime victims.


Also once again, your numbers are inflated.

just a rough estimate.


That's of course not mentioning the rest of China, let alone the other areas Japan occupied.

Japan's total war crime victims for WWII are at around 5.5 million according to R. J. Rummel. Statistics of democide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900 Transaction. US civilian victims in Vietnam are around 4.5 million total (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War) - some sources count differently and have figures of around 3 million. either way, its a comparable figure.

a big difference is that Japan apologized for its crimes and paid reparations. the US never did.


World War II was a total war where the bombing of civilian population centers was par for the course.

and Vietnam wasnt a total war? where the napalm bombing of civilian population was par for the course?


Good that you don't mention Dresden though, since the US wasn't the one who did the main fire bombing. You can thank the Royal Airforce for that one.

i did mention Dresden above.


See the thing is, while they may not like current US policy, that is not the same as hating the US. The people may support a distancing from the US, but they most certainly do not support a severing of ties or anything extreme like that.


yes. nevertheless - its a clear fact that most of the EU governments are (for political/military reasons) running a course that is far more US-friendly (you could also say subservient) that what the majority of the population wants.



You might be more convincing if those weren't all huge business sectors you mentioned, if there wasn't a McDonalds in or near your city, if there weren't any US movies playing in your theaters, if the US auto industry didn't own quite a few european companies, and if you weren't typing that on a computer running software from a US company. http://forums.animesuki.com/images/as.global/smilies/wink.gif


McDonalds and movies are good cases, I'll give you that. the US auto industry though.. is pretty much on its deathbed at the moment. GM does own Opel, but it just recently asked for a €40 billion rescue package from the German government. i think I dont need to explain how bad the situation is for Chrysler and Ford.

regarding the software question - yes that industry is one of the few remaining US strengths. although to be accurate i'm typing this in a German X terminal on my Linux server box :)

also.. it's easy to reverse this argument. for example i'll randomly guess that most of your electronics are Japanese, most of the stuff in your house is made in China, if you drive a good car its German, etc.


Except that you're flat out wrong there. The US reduced its military a lot since the cold war.

reduced the people count - slightly. 1.5 mil active personnel + 1.5 mil reserve as opposed to about 1.8 mil active and 2 mil reserve at a local peak during the 1991 Gulf War. the military spending however has increased dramatically. $651 billion total projected for 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
thats an unprecedented figure and more than the rest of the world combined. its over 100 billion more than at the peak times of the Cold War even if you factor in inflation.


We did in fact reduce our nuclear arsenal in accordance to the START treaty.

There are very major doubts about that. For example, regarding Trident missiles, tests were performed by the US with more than 8 warheads per missile, directly violating START-1. Russia complained about that, but nothing happened.The warhead covers used on Trident-1 and Trident-2 violated the treaty agreements for inspection options by the Russian side. Russian inspectors have been repeatedly denied access to nuclear subs which should have been inspected in accordance to the treaty. British missiles with nuclear carrying capacities were flight-tested at US sites - another treaty violation. US has announced that it did not have plans to use the B1 fleet as carriers for long-range nuclear cruise missiles, and agreed to seal the mounting pylons for heavy cruise missiles on B1s by welding which would require a factory visit to undo - which could be verified by Russian inspectors in accordance to the treaty. However, in reality, not welding was used, but an adhesive seal, which can easily be removed locally at the base where the B1s are stationed - which adds for another uncontrollable 1000+ deployable nuclear warheads - another major violation of the treaty. Yet another one was the scrapping process of the LGM-118 MX Peacekeeper missiles. According to the treaty, all stages of mobile BMs have to be scrapped - the US just scrapped the first stage of the MX missiles, which could in practice be replaced with the Castor-120 stage - which would allow to restore all 50 MX missiles with their 500 warheads within a short time. Yet another point is the deployment of US ABM defense - which also contradicts the treaty.

Thats just the tip of the iceberg, i'm too lazy to type it all off. Go inform yourself, it's all publicly available information. Basically the US circumvents the treaty wherever possible to keep and build up a large nuclear arsenal and a possibly advantageous situation for using it. Obviously you dont read all that in the NY Times though...


Also the Soviet Union didn't simply cut spending on it's military, it no longer exists as a nation.

the Soviet Union never even was a "nation" :)


Great that's one guy's opinion. If you look you can find many more who disagree. What we're seeing in Russia is most certainly not a return to their cold war stance.


the point is that this guy knows what he's talking about - different to the "many more who disagree". while I agree that Russia itself is not at all interested in resuming the Cold War, they dont really have any choice. they have to do something against the continuing military pressure from the US. and their measures like deploying anti-ABM missiles in Kaliningrad, developing new nuclear subs and BMs, and continually increasing military spending, are just logical consequences of US policy.

[Kamui4356]

well - white people arent the majority in the world, you know. US committed mass genocide against the Vietnamese population (both South and North), killing between 2 and 5 million (depending on source). it never paid any reparations or even apologized. in another completely clear case, the World Court ruled the US guilty of aggression and genocide in Nicaragua and ordered it to pay $2 billion in reparations already in 1986. The US flat out ignored that and continues to do so till today. you dont hear much about that in the media, do you?

For starters, not all those deaths in Vietnam were caused by US forces. You seem to be forgetting that the US wasn't simply bombing with impunity, there was an actual ground war. If there were a lot of civilian casualties, it's because a lot of the figthing was done in civilian areas.
As for Nicaragua, while the US did illegally fund the Contras, the US did not in fact contribute forces as anything other than advisers. The decision had nothing to do with genocide claims either. Of course I wouldn't expect facts to get in the way of your arguements.



well, just look into history. teh justification for the two nuclear strikes performed historically was to "save our youngsters" (quote Truman). it is regarded as a valid and correct decision up until today officially - the US also never apologized for that. even although it was a horrible, deliberate war crime - the bombs were dropped not on military targets (of which there were plenty), but on large cities, deliberately killing many thousands of women, children, etc. the Hiroshima bomb (I was there last year) was dropped merely a few hundred meters away from the city hospital.

If we had invaded Japan, the casualty figures on both sides would have been far far higher. Also you fail to understand the concept of total war. In a total war, civilian populations are a military target. That's how WWII was fought on all sides.

and no Israel will not do a preemptive nuclear strike. it's suicide. what they would do if they had "information" on Iran "planning" a strike would be an air raid with conventional weapons, perhaps also cruise missiles.

And if those cruise missiles don't destroy the targets? Israel will do whatever it takes to ensure their survival. If Iran is about to launch a nuclear strike, do you really expect Israel to not use everything they have to stop it? Of course we're dealing with very low probability scenerios here, but low probablity is not zero probablility.




if Israel were to attack Iran preemptively with a nuclear strike, all chance for any reconciliation would be lost forever. no Muslim would be content until Israel were destroyed completely, and earlier or later it would happen - latest simply when other Arab League states would obtain nuclear weapons. from a purely military standpoint, Israel ultimately fights a losing battle - they are merely around 8 million against half a billion Muslims even in the Arab League states (and more outside of it). that is occasionally admitted even by fairly high-ranking Israeli officers. I agree about the Arab states being largely bad at war, but even with that, the 1973 Yom Kippur war went far worse for Israel than the previous 1948 and 1967 wars. yes, they can so far survive by drafting women and receiving immense military support from the US, but if there were another major war in the near future, Israel would probably no longer be able to win conventionally and would have to resort to nuclear weapons.

Is there any doubt that Israel would resort to nuclear weapons though? Especially if we're talking about a scenerio where they had already used some. Also you seem to be overlooking the logistics of the situation. The Arab league simply cannot maintain an army like that in the field.



launching the Six-Day War, nuclear attack on Iran, etc. the invasion of Lebanon, while also obviously a war crime etc, was arguably not so "major". but even there - it was not just supported by the US, there is strong evidence that the Bush administration actually exerted pressure on Ehud Olmert to launch it:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/21/060821fa_fact
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=744043
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/739976.html

US approval of the plan is not the same as US approval of launching the plan. Besides, the plan the Israelis actually carried out was not the one mentioned there.



this is a minor technical detail. akin to the attack dog biting someone in the knee instead of the ankle where its master ordered it to.

No, it isn't a minor technical detail. It's a complete departure from the plan your sources claim Cheney (who has no authority to do so by the way) approved. Of course the US supported Israel regardless, as to do otherwise is political suicide in this country.




the US has committed more military and financial assistance to Israel than to any other country in the world, ever.

http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/israel050602.html

If North Korea were to invade South Korea, the US would send troops. If someone invaded Germany, the US would send troops. If someone invades Japan, the US would send troops. When people have invaded Israel, the US gave the Israelis some logistical and intelligence support. The US sent no troops. The amount of money we spent on assistance isn't really relevent. When the shit hits the fan so to speak, Israel's military is on the front lines alone.



the extent of control possible then was far from what is possible today. today it is possible to control a place by many means, and having a military presence there is merely one (and if you check http://www.ppu.org.uk/pm/US-military-bases-2001-03.jpg you'll see that it's not much less than the territory of the British Empire). other means of control are things like the IMF or NAFTA, military and economic aid, proxy governments (as in the Ukraine, Georgia, etc).

One big difference there though. Those are soverign nations that have US forces in them. In the end if they decide they want to be responsible for their own defense and ask the US to remove it's forces, the US would have little choice but to comply. Of course we'd try to offer all kinds of incentives to keep them there though. The British Empire on the other hand directly ruled 1/4 of the Earth, not simply had lots of influence on the local governments.

also, the speed with which a country can be punished for disobedience is much higher today than it was back then, for obvious technical reasons. which is also one of the reasons why the US has made so many military interventions since WWII - a lot more than the British Empire in any similarly long period.
True, though that's not really relevant and only speaks to the success of the British that they were able to do so much with far less in the way of technology.

overall it is really a simple case for any historian to prove that US influence today is unprecedented, way higher than that of the British or Roman Empire. just read a bit on that, you'll easily find sources.
Only because of advancing technology.


the 80% number is from a poll i've seen already a few years ago. 90% for Germany and 95-99% for Muslim places and Russia is something I can estimate from personal experience.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7708893.stm

there are also some polls with different numbers, more favorable for the US, like http://pewglobal.org/commentary/display.php?AnalysisID=1019 (coincidentally, with figures by teh US Department of State). i dont think those are realistic though.

So you admit you made up those figures and they have no basis in reality other than what you think sounds right?



the scale was different. nobody has ever killed more people on a single day than the US.

Right... It may have taken them a bit longer than we could do it today, but they still manages to rack up kills in the hundreds of thousands or even millions in short periods of time. The second deadliest war after WWII? That would be the An Shi Rebellion in China from 755-763. People can kill other people just fine without bombs and nukes. All you need to do is cut off their food supply and watch them starve.



yes. in the US, UK, or Russia. in Pakistan? i wouldnt bet on it.

For now they are. However, that would change if the current government there is overthrown. I believed I mentioned Pakistan's nukes are the most likely source. However, that also means they'd be the place international intelligence agencies would be keeping a close watch on.


well, you see, earlier or later that "American psyche" will change. the latest would be after all major US cities are destroyed and tens of millions are dead - i.e. a large-scale nuclear war. a local nuclear explosion destroying a single city might or might not be enough. dont know for sure.

See, that's the thing, everyone seems to think the US doesn't have the stomach for a bloody conflict. Massive attacks don't make Americans cower in fear, they make Americans swear revenge. This has been shown time and time again. The only way such a thing would work is if the feat showed that we couldn't win against them because they're simply too powerful. If terrorists were to drop an astroid on the US that might work. It would show a level of technology and infrastructure we couldn't win against. A terrorist detonating a low yield nuke from a boat on the other hand, not so much.




thats already largely the case today.


the "case" was completely laughable, and everyone not-brainwashed knew it. the one and only reason for this war is geopolitical control of the region with world's 2nd-largest oil resources.

The US today plays lipservice to international law. We did attempt to make a cae for invading Iraq, we didn't simply go ahead and invade. Add a nuclear terrorist attack and that lipservice ceases to exist. I'm not sure you understand what that means.

Also, you're assuming compotence and conspiricy on the part of the Bushy adminstration, when clearly they displayed a lack of the former, which is a prerequsite for the latter. No, I'm afraid the reason wasn't anything so grand. It was simply a case of Bushy wanting to finish what his father started. If we got control of Iraqi oil, so much the better. However, it wasn't the primary reason. I know there's a tendency to assume someone in that position wouldn't use military force for such a foolish reason, but sadly it just isn't true.



well, what else did you learn in school? probably you also learned that Japan provoked the US into dropping nuclear bombs on its cities, that the US won WWII, that space exploration started when Americans went to the moon, etc?

Yes, because I'm American it means my education was grounded in a firm base of propaganda. :rolleyes: No, I learned exactly what caused WWII, how the war was fought, and the US' true role, building the trucks that allowed the Russians to concentrate on building tanks and planes to grind the German Army into dust.;) Sorry, but not all American education consists of "America fuck yeah!!!" Some of us even learn geography. Of course considering your obvious bias, I don't expect you to believe that.

what you probably didnt learn is that the US killed far more civilians in Vietnam than Japan did in Nanjing - a number overall comparable to all of Japan's war crime victims.

Except the US didn't kill all those civilians. You're quoting the total number of casualties who died at the hands of both sides. Considering that much of the fighting was done in civilian population centers, the numbers are to be expected. Also once again you're compairing one incident to an entire war.



just a rough estimate.

If by rough estimate you mean pulled out of your ass, I guess you're right.


Japan's total war crime victims for WWII are at around 5.5 million according to R. J. Rummel. Statistics of democide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900 Transaction. US civilian victims in Vietnam are around 4.5 million total (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War) - some sources count differently and have figures of around 3 million. either way, its a comparable figure.

Once again, you're not comparing the same numbers. Now you're taking a subsection of the total Chinese casualties, those killing in direct war crimes, while comparing it to the total number killed, including military dead by the way, in vietnam. If you want to compare that number to the total number of Chinese dead in WWII, 20-35 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War#Chinese_casualties), depending on the source. I didn't want to play your little game, but your deliberate misrepresentation of those numbers left me little choice.

a big difference is that Japan apologized for its crimes and paid reparations. the US never did.

The order of magnitude higher thing isn't a big difference then?


and Vietnam wasnt a total war? where the napalm bombing of civilian population was par for the course?

No, it was not a total war. There wasn't a round the clock bombardment of North Vietnamese population centers throughout the war for one thing. Bombing of North Vietnam was heavily restricted though most of the war. The closest it came was operation rolling thhunder, but even then Hanoi itself was off limits.

Remember, most of the Vietnam war was fought in the South, with the US on the defensive do to fears an invasion of North Vietnam would bring China and Russia into the conflict directly.




i did mention Dresden above.

Yes, in the context of not mentioning it. :rolleyes: At which point I said that you can't blame the US of that one as it was largely a British attack. The US has done a lot of things wrong. No need to go around blaming them for more.



yes. nevertheless - its a clear fact that most of the EU governments are (for political/military reasons) running a course that is far more US-friendly (you could also say subservient) that what the majority of the population wants.

So then vote for people who doesn't support such policies? That people who support such policies keep winning re-election says that even if most Europeans don't like them, they at least acknowledge they're necessary.


McDonalds and movies are good cases, I'll give you that. the US auto industry though.. is pretty much on its deathbed at the moment. GM does own Opel, but it just recently asked for a €40 billion rescue package from the German government. i think I dont need to explain how bad the situation is for Chrysler and Ford.

True enough. However, I wouldn't say the US auto industy is on it's deathbed. Even without a government bailout they could survive by selling off some of their european and asian namebrands to raise cash. At least Ford could. Chrysler is probably in the worst shape and doesn't really have any divisions left to sell. GM can recover, but they'd need a quick infusion of cash and I'm not sure they could sell off a division in time.

regarding the software question - yes that industry is one of the few remaining US strengths. although to be accurate i'm typing this in a German X terminal on my Linux server box :)

Fair enough, I gambled on the odds you'd be using a windows PC and lost.




reduced the people count - slightly. 1.5 mil active personnel + 1.5 mil reserve as opposed to about 1.8 mil active and 2 mil reserve at a local peak during the 1991 Gulf War. the military spending however has increased dramatically. $651 billion total projected for 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
thats an unprecedented figure and more than the rest of the world combined. its over 100 billion more than at the peak times of the Cold War even if you factor in inflation.
Once again you manage to manipulate numbers. The US military decreased it's size following the collapse of the Soviet union, then built it back up following 9-11.

From your own source: "This is historically low for the United States since it peaked in 1944 at 37.8% of GDP (it reached the lowest point of 3.0% in 1999-2001)." Of course that 38% number is during WWII, so should be considered an artifical high. The US doesn't even make the top 10 in terms of military expenditure by percentage of GPD. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_federations_by_military_expe nditures#List_of_countries_by_military_expenditure _as_a_percentage_of_GDP)



There are very major doubts about that. For example, regarding Trident missiles, tests were performed by the US with more than 8 warheads per missile, directly violating START-1. Russia complained about that, but nothing happened.The warhead covers used on Trident-1 and Trident-2 violated the treaty agreements for inspection options by the Russian side. Russian inspectors have been repeatedly denied access to nuclear subs which should have been inspected in accordance to the treaty. British missiles with nuclear carrying capacities were flight-tested at US sites - another treaty violation. US has announced that it did not have plans to use the B1 fleet as carriers for long-range nuclear cruise missiles, and agreed to seal the mounting pylons for heavy cruise missiles on B1s by welding which would require a factory visit to undo - which could be verified by Russian inspectors in accordance to the treaty. However, in reality, not welding was used, but an adhesive seal, which can easily be removed locally at the base where the B1s are stationed - which adds for another uncontrollable 1000+ deployable nuclear warheads - another major violation of the treaty. Yet another one was the scrapping process of the LGM-118 MX Peacekeeper missiles. According to the treaty, all stages of mobile BMs have to be scrapped - the US just scrapped the first stage of the MX missiles, which could in practice be replaced with the Castor-120 stage - which would allow to restore all 50 MX missiles with their 500 warheads within a short time. Yet another point is the deployment of US ABM defense - which also contradicts the treaty.

Except for the ABMs, which don't work anyway, all those things have more to do with doing it cheaply, rather than doing it correctly. It's a fact that the US has dismantled actual warheads in accordance to treaties such as SORT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORT). If we skimped a bit on the delivary vechicals, well we shouldn't have, but a delivery system without a warhead to deliver isn't much of an issue. A working ABM system would be a huge issue though, especially with reduced arsenals, which is why you see Moscow making a bigger deal about that.

Thats just the tip of the iceberg, i'm too lazy to type it all off. Go inform yourself, it's all publicly available information. Basically the US circumvents the treaty wherever possible to keep and build up a large nuclear arsenal and a possibly advantageous situation for using it. Obviously you dont read all that in the NY Times though...

Yet the US still reduced the size of it's nuclear arsenal greatly. The Russians also retain a large nuclear arsenal, yet reduced it greatly from it's height. Maintaning a large nuclear deterrent in not necessarily in violation of the treaties in question.


the Soviet Union never even was a "nation" :)

They were as much a nation as the US would have been under the articles of confederation. That's close enough.

the point is that this guy knows what he's talking about - different to the "many more who disagree". while I agree that Russia itself is not at all interested in resuming the Cold War, they dont really have any choice. they have to do something against the continuing military pressure from the US. and their measures like deploying anti-ABM missiles in Kaliningrad, developing new nuclear subs and BMs, and continually increasing military spending, are just logical consequences of US policy.


Russia's actions could be much more accurately explained as an attempt to re-assert itself and show that it's a powerful nation once again, rather than some alarmist reaction to US policies that aren't directed against it. I'd contend that Russia in fact does not seek an antagonistic relationship with the US and is conducting it's current actions more to say thet they're not weak and we'll need to work with them to get things accomplished rather than because they feel directly threatened by the US. In short, Russia's saying they're not a nation we can dictate to.

[Reckoner]

The only comment I have to make about Iran and North Korea specifically is that the governments (Not going to say the people) are definitely not solely aiming for nuclear energy. They want the bomb. Whether or not we should let them have it is a different question, but people who try to have this argument of establishing nuclear power by foreign sources in these countries are not realizing that they would never agree to such things.

Eventually though, nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of many, those who will probably use them. That will certainly be a dark day. Maybe we need to reinitialize Ronald Reagan's idea of Star Wars :heh:.

[Mumitroll]

For starters, not all those deaths in Vietnam were caused by US forces. You seem to be forgetting that the US wasn't simply bombing with impunity, there was an actual ground war. If there were a lot of civilian casualties, it's because a lot of the figthing was done in civilian areas.


so what? they were a direct consequence of the US policy there - basically an imperial attempt to install an unpopular government (in South Vietnam) in order to gain geopolitical control, which had much popular resistance against itself and was unable to cope without direct military invasion from the US.


As for Nicaragua, while the US did illegally fund the Contras, the US did not in fact contribute forces as anything other than advisers.

again, so what? Nicaragua getting practically ruined in the Contra war was again a direct consequence of the US policy there. the fact that the Contras were merely a tool and the US did not kill Nicaraguans directly doesn't change anything about the reality - which the World Court confirmed. its all common knowledge.


Of course I wouldn't expect facts to get in the way of your arguements.

what facts?


If we had invaded Japan, the casualty figures on both sides would have been far far higher.


thats not a given. Germany had surrendered, the USSR had just entered the war on Japan, and it was clear that Japan was doomed to everyone involved.



Also you fail to understand the concept of total war. In a total war, civilian populations are a military target. That's how WWII was fought on all sides.


that is to an extent correct. however, US-UK still hold the grand prize for killing civilians with the utmost speed and effectiveness - firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo as well as nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. the USSR for example never did anything comparable. the Wehrmacht did on the Eastern front, in particular regarding the siege of Leningrad, but nothing even close on the Western front.


And if those cruise missiles don't destroy the targets? Israel will do whatever it takes to ensure their survival. If Iran is about to launch a nuclear strike

Iran will not do a nuclear first strike either. It is suicide.


Is there any doubt that Israel would resort to nuclear weapons though?


when faced with imminent invasion (and consequent dissolution of the Jewish state), probably they would.



Especially if we're talking about a scenerio where they had already used some. Also you seem to be overlooking the logistics of the situation. The Arab league simply cannot maintain an army like that in the field.


why not. it's all merely a question of money. since oil is going to get ever more expensive in the years to come, its not infeasible. some of the Arab League states belong to the top Russian arms export customers.


US approval of the plan is not the same as US approval of launching the plan. Besides, the plan the Israelis actually carried out was not the one mentioned there.

you're trying to play with words. it's all largely the same. the US supports Israel in its mini-wars, with immense military and economic aid, and in some cases instigates them.


No, it isn't a minor technical detail. It's a complete departure from the plan

oh really? i fail to see much difference between invading a sovereign country X with using cluster bombs and invading it without using them.


Of course the US supported Israel regardless, as to do otherwise is political suicide in this country.


well, have you once asked yourself why?


If North Korea were to invade South Korea, the US would send troops. If someone invaded Germany, the US would send troops. If someone invades Japan, the US would send troops.


says who? take this recent example, just 3 months: Russia "invading" little democratic peaceful US-friendly Georgia (that was the version of the Western media all along). what does the US do? watch it getting owned.


When people have invaded Israel, the US gave the Israelis some logistical and intelligence support. The US sent no troops.

do you know why? "On commencement of hostilities, American leaders expected the tide of the war to quickly shift in favor of the better-equipped IDF and that Arab armies would be completely defeated within 72 to 96 hours."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB98/octwar-17.pdf

basically they thought it wasnt worth the trouble :) the problem was that if the US engaged in direct military action supporting Israel, the USSR would have been free to do the same in favor of the Arab states - a path which the US had already painfully experienced just a few years before in Vietnam and previously in Korea as well.

coincidentally the USSR military strategists thought the same.


When the shit hits the fan so to speak, Israel's military is on the front lines alone.

lol no. until the moment that they start to lose, yes. but then...


One big difference there though. Those are soverign nations that have US forces in them. In the end if they decide they want to be responsible for their own defense and ask the US to remove it's forces, the US would have little choice but to comply. Of course we'd try to offer all kinds of incentives to keep them there though. The British Empire on the other hand directly ruled 1/4 of the Earth, not simply had lots of influence on the local governments.


okay, I'll give you that.


Only because of advancing technology.

yes, of course.


So you admit you made up those figures and they have no basis in reality other than what you think sounds right?


no. it's about realistic. the 80% figure is a poll one. you'll eventually notice it yourself if you travel around the world a bit. i've been in 34 countries up to date. and i'm yet to come to one where i would see any majority support for the US foreign policy. not even the US itself - sounds like a paradox but it's life.


Right... It may have taken them a bit longer than we could do it today, but they still manages to rack up kills in the hundreds of thousands or even millions in short periods of time. The second deadliest war after WWII? That would be the An Shi Rebellion in China from 755-763. People can kill other people just fine without bombs and nukes. All you need to do is cut off their food supply and watch them starve.


true. still, the history #1 prize for killing the most innocent people at once, without question, goes to Truman and Little Boy.



See, that's the thing, everyone seems to think the US doesn't have the stomach for a bloody conflict. Massive attacks don't make Americans cower in fear, they make Americans swear revenge. This has been shown time and time again.


oh really? the US never once fought a war on its territory - well except the Civil War and the war of independence, which were both very small by 20th century standards. the single largest ever attack on US territory was 9/11 - which would barely be mentioned in a WWI or WWII context.

i think a nuclear bomb exploding in NYC would probably change the "neocon psyche" somewhat.



The only way such a thing would work is if the feat showed that we couldn't win against them because they're simply too powerful. If terrorists were to drop an astroid on the US that might work. It would show a level of technology and infrastructure we couldn't win against. A terrorist detonating a low yield nuke from a boat on the other hand, not so much.

dont know. even a low yield nuke (say, 50kt - a default warhead for various tactical missiles) near Manhattan would be sufficient for probably around a million dead and a further couple million getting a heavy radiation dosis. and it would destroy the HQs of like half of the US financial industry in a flash. that would be rather noticeable. the issue would then be that it would not even be directly possible to retaliate. they've been trying to retaliate for 9/11 for 7 years now. without much success - bin Laden is still out there, Afghanistan is still largely under Taliban control, Al Qaeda is still fine and killing Iraqis and US soldiers in Iraq every day.

the well-known problem is that terrorists are not an enemy you can take revenge on. the correct way to fight terrorism is to undermine the basis from which it recruits its people - by running a more balanced and sane foreign policy. they dont do just for fun - their outspoken goal (quote bin Laden) is "to topple the corrupt US-installed regimes in Arab states". it's a banality, and really obvious to any bright fifth-grader, but i think it would take a nuke in the US to make neocons up there understand that.


The US today plays lipservice to international law.

that isnt of any importance. that "lipservice" you mean is just cheap propaganda. it's difficult to sell people that you're going to invade Iraq tomorrow because it has lots of oil and you want to control it. it doesnt go together with the American values of freedom and democracy. so you have to invent some random pretext. whatever works. WMD, Al Qaeda, little green men from Mars... as long as you can sell it to the dumb, its fine.

obviously everybody sane saw it was all a pretext. thats why there were many millions of people protesting worldwide. but the US just spat on that.


Add a nuclear terrorist attack and that lipservice ceases to exist. I'm not sure you understand what that means.


it means nothing.



Also, you're assuming compotence and conspiricy on the part of the Bushy adminstration

not at all. i think they are a bunch of idiots - with the largest military budget ever in world history. but well you see, being an idiot and being a neocon is not mutually exclusive :D



No, I'm afraid the reason wasn't anything so grand. It was simply a case of Bushy wanting to finish what his father started. If we got control of Iraqi oil, so much the better. However, it wasn't the primary reason. I know there's a tendency to assume someone in that position wouldn't use military force for such a foolish reason, but sadly it just isn't true.


there's no factual basis for that statement. on the other hand, there are tons of evidence that it has been a longterm goal of the US for decades to gain control of Iraqi oil. it was already written in a 1951 Department of State document, go read it up. this was deemed to be partially achieved when Saddam was installed (with US support), but was lost again when he went loose and attacked Kuwait. now its in a shaky state, with the puppet government being rather unstable, but in the longer term it will probably ultimately be US-controlled.

the US isnt original with this idea. the Brits had the same ideas before them. they just lacked the longterm power to control the area.


Yes, because I'm American it means my education was grounded in a firm base of propaganda. No, I learned exactly what caused WWII, how the war was fought, and the US' true role, building the trucks that allowed the Russians to concentrate on building tanks and planes to grind the German Army into dust. Sorry, but not all American education consists of "America fuck yeah!!!" Some of us even learn geography.


well, if you actually learned that, kudos to you. such knowledge is uncommon with sub-graduate-degree-level Americans (and yes i've talked to many.. and i've travelled over a good part of the US). most of them think that D-Day was the key battle in the war. while it barely makes the top 10. and hardly anyone knows the first man in space or where Georgia (the other Georgia, y'know) actually is...


Of course considering your obvious bias, I don't expect you to believe that.

it's not bias, it's the result of 10+ years of impartial observation of world events. when i was 15 i was far more US-friendly than I am today. my image of the US largely went downhill though as I learned more and more on world history and politics.



Except the US didn't kill all those civilians. You're quoting the total number of casualties who died at the hands of both sides.


thats a great example of relativizing. let me make a comparable statement about, say, Stalingrad: "Except that the Nazis didn't kill all those civilians. You're quoting the total number of casualties who died at the hands of both sides."

so yeah, the Russians were killing their own civilians, right?


Once again, you're not comparing the same numbers. Now you're taking a subsection of the total Chinese casualties, those killing in direct war crimes, while comparing it to the total number killed, including military dead by the way, in vietnam. If you want to compare that number to the total number of Chinese dead in WWII, 20-35 million, depending on the source. I didn't want to play your little game, but your deliberate misrepresentation of those numbers left me little choice.


the 17 million civilian figure is the Sino-Japanese War, not just WWII, it started already in 1935, and furthermore that number includes about 12 million famine victims. which may or may not have been an indirect victim of the Japanese intervention.


I didn't want to play your little game, but your deliberate misrepresentation of those numbers left me little choice.


whether you "play this game" or not, you cant win anyway. it is a historical fact that the US (directly or through proxies) killed millions of Vietnamese, invading the country in violation of any international rights.


The order of magnitude higher thing isn't a big difference then?

there is no order of magnitude because your figure includes 10 mil+ famine victims which were not necessarily related to the Sino-Japanese war. its like the Holodomor in Ukraine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor) which some people like to declare to be a deliberate genocide of the Ukraine by the USSR, but most historians agree on to be more of a combination of various events not limited to Ukraine.


At which point I said that you can't blame the US of that one as it was largely a British attack. The US has done a lot of things wrong. No need to go around blaming them for more.


I dont make much of a distinction between the US and UK. so you can already see that i'm not anti-American or anything :D the UK, nowadays, is just another attack dog of the US. just a bit stronger than Israel, and more conveniently situated. at WWII time, the UK was still reasonably independent politically, so the blame for carpet- and firebombings of German cities lies with Churchill & co to a very large extent as well.



No, it was not a total war. There wasn't a round the clock bombardment of North Vietnamese population centers throughout the war for one thing. Bombing of North Vietnam was heavily restricted though most of the war.


hah. brace yourself... the total amount of bombs dropped on Vietnam (South and North, but mainly South) was 7+ million tons, 3 times more than in all Allied bombing of WWII (!) - on an area only about 1/30th of Europe - with a very large amount of incendiaries, including things like burning rice fields with napalm (a great invention not yet available in WWII times) in order to prevent the population from providing food and supplies to the Vietcong.

Vietnam is - by far - the most heavily bombed country in human history.

so that wasnt a total war, you said?



So then vote for people who doesn't support such policies?

the problem is that there are no such people in the major parties of most European countries because with the current political climate, it is "political suicide" to be anti-US in either of the major parties. for example here in Germany, we currently have a ruling coalition of CDU (Christian Democrats, more conservative) and SPD (Social Democrats, more liberal), with the chancellor Angela Merkel being from CDU (and a complete doormat for the US). however, both CDU and SPD run a rather US-subservient course. it's probably mainly historically rooted, but hard to explain exactly when you think about it. it's not even really in German interest - for example Merkel taking the US position in the recent Russia-Georgia conflict could have threatened Germany very directly - we get like half of the gas, and a large portion of various other resources, from Russia, not mentioning Russia being a very large automobile industry export customer (larger than the German domestic market for the first time in 2007).

the small more extremist parties do run a more independent course, but those usually dont get more than 10-15% and are at best a weak member of a coalition.

theres a similar picture in the UK, with both Tories and Laborists being rather US-subservient.

France is probably the old EU country which is closest to running its own course. still, it is largely in line with US interests apart from a few issues where France's own interests conflict with them.

the fun thing is that the large majorities of the populations of all those countries dont like the US foreign policy. but they mostly dont have much of a choice to pick from in terms of their own government. its a rather static system.


Fair enough, I gambled on the odds you'd be using a windows PC and lost.

well you were close - I am now typing this on my notebook at home - with WinXP.



However, I wouldn't say the US auto industy is on it's deathbed.

well, they surely wont die completely - the US needs cars after all - but they're quite far from being profitable, and for a good reason - they're not competitive internationally. the Germans and the Japanese simply make better cars.


This is historically low for the United States since it peaked in 1944 at 37.8% of GDP (it reached the lowest point of 3.0% in 1999-2001)


first, GDP percentages, per capita, etc, have only limited value. for example, in terms of GDP per capita, Luxembourg is the richest country in the world. so what? the expressive power of that is near zero since the place is tiny. if you take major nations - China, Russia, India, Japan, European ones - the US is still by far in the lead, both GDP- and absolute figure-wise.

i think you should look at this chart for a while:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/WorldMilitarySpending.jpg

even taking US history only, in terms of absolute spending, even inflation-corrected, its at a maximum today.


Yet the US still reduced the size of it's nuclear arsenal greatly. The Russians also retain a large nuclear arsenal, yet reduced it greatly from it's height. Maintaning a large nuclear deterrent in not necessarily in violation of the treaties in question.


I think I have just described some of the numerous US violations of the treaty in much technical detail, havent I?



Russia's actions could be much more accurately explained as an attempt to re-assert itself and show that it's a powerful nation once again, rather than some alarmist reaction to US policies that aren't directed against it.


thats what you read in most Western newspapers and hear on TV. it's rather blatant propaganda, though. i know very much on this subject, so I could explain it all in much detail on a case by case basis... but it would take forever. so let me just say this.. who did have to fight a pocket war financed by someone else right at their border just 3 months ago? was it the US with Cuba or Mexico? or was it Russia?


I'd contend that Russia in fact does not seek an antagonistic relationship with the US and is conducting it's current actions more to say thet they're not weak and we'll need to work with them to get things accomplished rather than because they feel directly threatened by the US. In short, Russia's saying they're not a nation we can dictate to.

in general, thats correct. what you should think about though is - if, conversely, we assume that the US does not seek an antagonistic relationship with Russia, why does it install first-strike weapons in Poland and the Czech Republic? why does it expand NATO eastward, directly violating agreements made in the 90s? why does it install puppet regimes in the Ukraine and Georgia, at Russia's border? why does it weasel its way out of nuclear disarmament treaties and not extend them? why does it instigate a war at Russia's border, after extensively supporting the perpetrator with weapons and military aid? why does it present the picture as "Russia invading" in the media?

just sit down and think about it all for a while. and then write your conclusion :D

[Kamui4356]

so what? they were all a direct consequence of the US policy there - basically an imperial attempt to install an unpopular government (in South Vietnam) in order to gain geopolitical control, which had much popular resistance against itself and was unable to cope without direct military invasion from the US.

Actually it was as much a product of French policy as American policy, perhaps even more so. If France didn't attempt to retain to it's holdings there, the whole situation never would have happened to begin with.




again, so what? Nicaragua getting practically ruined in the Contra war was again a direct consequence of the US policy there. the fact that the Contras were merely a tool and the US did not kill Nicaraguans directly doesn't change anything about the reality - which the World Court confirmed. its all common knowledge.

So there's no difference between the US invadig and simply supplying a local faction? Sorry, but I don't buy it, and neither does anyone else. The world court said the US was responsible for supplying weapons and finding the contras, not commiting genocide.




what facts?

The little fact that the forces there were not under US command for one. Sure, you can make a strong case that the US should not have funded the contras once it became clear what kind of people they were. However, that doesn't mean you can hold the US accountable for all their actions.


thats not a given. Germany had surrendered, the USSR had just entered the war on Japan, and it was clear that Japan was doomed to everyone involved.

Yes, Germany surrendered, because Soviet troops were in Berlin, after having reduced it to rubble and US and British forces were closing in from the west. Most of Germany had already fallen to Allied forces and the German military was completely crushed. Japan on the other hand had 40 fully equipped divisions in the home islands with another 25 ready, but lacking gear as well as thousands of aircraft. Sure, Japan couldn't win the war, but they weren't quite beaten either. Even with the atomic bombs and the Soviets invading the Kuriel islands a good number of Japanese officers wanted to continue fighting. In fact they even attempted a coup to stp the surrender from taking place. No, Japan could not have won, but they did have a realistic chance of repulsing the initial landings and getting a better deal. Without both the bombs and Russia entering the war, the Japanese likely wouldn't have surrendered until Kyushu fell at the very least, which would have been very bloody.




that is to an extent correct. however, US-UK still hold the grand prize for killing civilians with the utmost speed and effectiveness - firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo as well as nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. the USSR for example never did anything comparable. the Wehrmacht did on the Eastern front, in particular regarding the siege of Leningrad, but nothing even close on the Western front.

While the Russians may not have conducted strategic bombings, they did a fine job killing people on the ground. That's WWII for you, a madness that humanity must never again repeat.



Iran will not do a nuclear first strike either. It is suicide.

Of course it is, hense why it's a low probablity scenerio.


when faced with imminent invasion (and consequent dissolution of the Jewish state), probably they would.

So we're agreed that there are situations where Israel would use nuclear weapons then?



why not. it's all merely a question of money. since oil is going to get ever more expensive in the years to come, its not infeasible. some of the Arab League states belong to the top Russian arms export customers.

See buying arms doesn't give you logistics. It's not a matter of just throwing money at the problem either. It's a matter of making sure you have the trucks to bring up the food and ammunition for your soldiers, the repair crews to keep your vechicals operating, things like that. You can't buy a few thousand tanks and send them someplace. An army that tries it usually ends up dead.




you're trying to play with words. it's all largely the same. the US supports Israel in its mini-wars, with immense military and economic aid, and in some cases instigates them.

There's a big difference. One is saying, "ok, we have this plan in case we ever have to invade Lebanon, you guys think this would be ok?" While the other is saying, "Yeah, we're going to go ahead and invade now, you have a problem with it?"




oh really? i fail to see much difference between invading a sovereign country X with using cluster bombs and invading it without using them.

You honestly don't see the difference between presenting a plan, which the US approves on condition that they don't use the cluster bombs, and Israel throwing away that plan and using them anyway? It's basicly a doublecross.




well, have you once asked yourself why?

Because pro-israeli lobbiest groups have a lot of money and influence and speaking out against Israeli policies is spun by your political opponents as meaning you're anti-semetic. Look at the criticism Carter faced just after the 2006 war by suggesting that Israel made a mistake by invading Lebanon and shared responsibility for the Palestinian crisis.




says who? take this recent example, just 3 months: Russia "invading" little democratic peaceful US-friendly Georgia (that was the version of the Western media all along). what does the US do? watch it getting owned.

Except that Georgia fired first and isn't exactly a close ally. There are no treaties guarranteeing mutual defense either. Also no, sorry but the "western media" did report the facts. Search cnn.com and you'll find lots of stories About how the Georgians started it, including one from a few days before the war itself about Georgia shelling a villiage in South Ossetia. The political pundits, however, then spun the story into the evil russians invading, and that's what stuck. The facts were reported first, then it was changed.




do you know why? "On commencement of hostilities, American leaders expected the tide of the war to quickly shift in favor of the better-equipped IDF and that Arab armies would be completely defeated within 72 to 96 hours."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB98/octwar-17.pdf

basically they thought it wasnt worth the trouble :) the problem was that if the US engaged in direct military action supporting Israel, the USSR would have been free to do the same in favor of the Arab states - a path which the US had already painfully experienced just a few years before in Vietnam and previously in Korea as well.

coincidentally the USSR military strategists thought the same.

Which is why we violated that mutual defense treaty we have with Israel. Oh wait, that's right we don't have one and never did. Funny how we overlooked getting one with our good buddy Israel, considering we've got one with so many other countries.




lol no. until the moment that they start to lose, yes. but then...

Actually if that happens most of the neo-cons would be too busy celebrating that Jesus is about to return to lend a hand.



no. it's about realistic. the 80% figure is a poll one. you'll eventually notice it yourself if you travel around the world a bit. i've been in 34 countries up to date. and i'm yet to come to one where i would see any majority support for the US foreign policy. not even the US itself - sounds like a paradox but it's life.

Not likeing US foriegn policy is not the same as hating the US...




true. still, the history #1 prize for killing the most innocent people at once, without question, goes to Truman and Little Boy.

Yet people can kill each other fine without nukes.





oh really? the US never once fought a war on its territory - well except the Civil War and the war of independence, which were both very small by 20th century standards. the single largest ever attack on US territory was 9/11 - which would barely be mentioned in a WWI or WWII context.

You forgot the war of 1812 where the British burned down Washington DC. Also 9-11 is nothing compared to the death toll of battles like Antietam. If the Civil war doesn't have the death toll of WWI or WWII, it's because there weren't as many people to kill, not a lack of trying.

i think a nuclear bomb exploding in NYC would probably change the "neocon psyche" somewhat.

Oh it would most certainly change it. Nuclear weapons would then be considered a vaild weapon.



dont know. even a low yield nuke (say, 50kt - a default warhead for various tactical missiles) near Manhattan would be sufficient for probably around a million dead and a further couple million getting a heavy radiation dosis. and it would destroy the HQs of like half of the US financial industry in a flash. that would be rather noticeable. the issue would then be that it would not even be directly possible to retaliate. they've been trying to retaliate for 9/11 for 7 years now. without much success - bin Laden is still out there, Afghanistan is still largely under Taliban control, Al Qaeda is still fine and killing people and US soldiers in Iraq every day.

If Al Qaeda is fine it's because of the Bushy admistration not putting the forces they need in Afganistan from the start so they could invade Iraq. Even so it's not a case that Al qaeda survived fine, but that Bushy gave them breatheing room to rebuild. Also, contrary to what the US would like everyone to believe it is in fact not Al qaeda who's the problem in Iraq, rather local insurrgents.

the well-known problem is that terrorists are not an enemy you can take revenge on. the correct way to fight terrorism is to undermine the basis from which it recruits its people - by running a more balanced and sane foreign policy. they dont do just for fun - their outspoken goal (quote bin Laden) is "to topple the corrupt US-installed regimes in Arab states". it's a banality, and really obvious to any bright fifth-grader, but i think it would take a nuke in the US to make neocons up there understand that.

See the thing is that might be the correct way, but there is another war to accomplish the goal of undermining the support. Wiping out the supporting population. A nuclear strike on the US by terrorists would push the US in that direction, not the "oh we should revise our foriegn policy so they won't hate us" direction. The US is in fact coming around to the revise foriegn policy way of thinking. That Obama won the election is evidence of that. However, massive attacks on the US will only put the American population into the military action camp and give the neo-cons power once again.



that isnt of any importance. that "lipservice" you mean is just cheap propaganda. it's difficult to sell people that you're going to invade Iraq tomorrow because it has lots of oil and you want to control it. it doesnt go together with the American values of freedom and democracy. so you have to invent some random pretext. whatever works. WMD, Al Qaeda, little green men from Mars... as long as you can sell it to the dumb, its fine.

obviously everybody sane saw it was all a pretext. thats why there were many millions of people protesting worldwide. but the US just spat on that.

Yet they still bothered to try. I'm taking about a US that wouldn't even bother with that, which is exactly what we'd get if terrorists detonated a nuclear device in a US city.



it means nothing.
As I thought you don't understand what it means. It means, no attempts at coiliation building, no trying to get support. It means the US would go in, bomb the hell out of a place, and pull out. No pretending to justify it, just bombing.



not at all. i think they are a bunch of idiots - with the largest military budget ever in world history. but well you see, being an idiot and being a neocon is not mutually exclusive :D

I'd say one is a prerequisite for the other.

The US is moving away from such policies, slowly, but surely. Of course a terrorist attack would change that.





there's no factual basis for that statement. on the other hand, there are tons of evidence that it has been a longterm goal of the US for decades to gain control of Iraqi oil. it was already written in a 1951 Department of State document, go read it up. this was deemed to be partially achieved when Saddam was installed (with US support), but was lost again when he went loose and attacked Kuwait. now its in a shaky state, with the puppet government being rather unstable, but in the longer term it will probably ultimately be US-controlled.

Oh I'm not claiming it wasn't a neo-con goal, and a sensible one at that if you look only at the oil. I'm just claiming that achieving that goal for itself wasn't important to Bushy. His concern was succeeding where his father failed. That has been one of his driving forces as president.

the US isnt original with this idea. the Brits had the same ideas before them. they just lacked the longterm power to control the area.

It is a sensible idea, if one ignores the human price after all.



well, if you actually learned that, kudos to you. such knowledge is uncommon with sub-graduate-degree-level Americans (and yes i've talked to many.. and i've travelled over most of the US). most of them think that D-Day was the key battle in the war. while it barely makes the top 10. and hardly anyone knows the first man in space or where Georgia (the other Georgia, y'know) actually is...

Mainly because they don't pay attention in class and forget about stuff once the test is over. Of course that's a condition that is not unique to Americans. The stuff is covered, to varying degrees of completeness and accuracy, depending on the standards of the school. Though I'd argue that D-Day was an imporant battle, as it opened a second front against Germany. Sure Russia probably would have been able to push into germany without it, as well as the US and British pushing up from Italy, though if you remove the operations in France it does free up quite a few German divisions which could have been used to make the Russian advance much more costly.




thats a great example of relativizing. let me make a comparable statement about, say, Stalingrad: "Except that the Nazis didn't kill all those civilians. You're quoting the total number of casualties who died at the hands of both sides."

so yeah, the Russians were killing their own civilians, right?

Except you're forgetting one little detail, the US never invaded North Vietnam. Many of those civilians killed were South Vietnamese killed in battles. So, no you're comparison doesn't really hold up.




the 17 million civilian figure is the Sino-Japanese War, not just WWII, it started already in 1935, and furthermore that number includes about 12 million famine victims. which may or may not have been an indirect victim of the Japanese intervention.

Right... So the figure is too high for the purposes of your arguement, so you'll dismiss a good chunk of them as people who would have died anyway, or died before it was officially WWII.




whether you "play this game" or not, you cant win anyway. it is a historical fact that the US (directly or through proxies) killed millions of Vietnamese, invading the country in violation of any international rights.

See, once again you're wrong. The US didn't invade Vietnam, we were asked there, admittedly by a government we helped install, to defend them against the North. The US did not launch a major invasion of North Vietnam. Most of the fighting was done in the south. Once again a good number of the civilans killed were South Vietnamese who were caught in the crossfire.



there is no order of magnitude because your figure includes 10 mil+ famine victims which were not necessarily related to the Sino-Japanese war. its like the Holodomor in Ukraine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor) which some people like to declare to be a deliberate genocide of the Ukraine by the USSR, but most historians agree on to be more of a combination of various events not limited to Ukraine.

So those people would have starved without the Japanese troops buring their crops? Sorry, but when you're actively uprooting a population and burning their crops, you're responsible for their deaths when they starve.




I dont make much of a distinction between the US and UK. so you can already see that i'm not anti-American or anything :D the UK, nowadays, is just another attack dog of the US. just a bit stronger than Israel, and more conveniently situated. at WWII time, the UK was still reasonably independent politically, so the blame for carpet and firebombings of German cities lies with Churchill & co to a very large extent as well.

Yet you're still more than willing to give that share of the blame to the US.





hah. brace yourself... the total amount of bombs dropped on Vietnam (South and North, but mainly South) was 7+ million tons, 3 times more than in all Allied bombing of WWII (!) - on an area only about 1/30th of Europe - with a very large amount of incendiaries, including things like burning rice fields with napalm (a great invention not yet available in WWII times) in order to prevent the population from providing food and supplies to the Vietcong.

Vietnam is - by far - the most heavily bombed country in human history.

so that wasnt a total war, you said?

Yet why is it that North Vietnam survived relatively intact? Maybe because most of that ordinance was dropped on supply lines in the jungle rather than Hanoi? The question isn't the number of bombs used, but where they were dropped. For most of the war major cities like Hanoi were off limits to US bombers. So no, it was not a total war.





the problem is that there are no such people in the major parties of most European countries because with the current political climate, it is "political suicide" to be anti-US in either of the major parties. for example here in Germany, we currently have a ruling coalition of CDU (Christian Democrats, more conservative) and SPD (Social Democrats, more liberal), with the chancellor Angela Merkel being from CDU (and a complete doormat for the US). however, both CDU and SPD run a rather US-subservient course. it's probably mainly historically rooted, but hard to explain exactly when you think about it. it's not even really in German interest - for example Merkel taking the US position in the recent Russia-Georgia conflict could have threatened Germany very directly - we get like half of the gas, and a large portion of various other resources, from Russia, not mentioning Russia being a very large automobile industry export customer (larger than the German domestic market for the first time in 2007).

the small more extremist parties do run a more independent course, but those usually dont get more than 10-15% and are at best a weak member of a coalition.

theres a similar picture in the UK, with both Tories and Laborists being rather US-subservient.

France is probably the old EU country which is closest to running its own course. still, it is largely in line with US interests apart from a few issues where France's own interests conflict with them.

the fun thing is that the large majorities of the populations of all those countries dont like the US foreign policy. but they mostly dont have much of a choice to pick from in terms of their own government. its a rather static system.

Funny, you'd think in such a climate politicians running on an anti-American platform would do well. That they don't is rather telling.


well you were close - I am now typing this on my notebook at home - with WinXP.
Cheater.



well, they surely wont die completely - the US needs cars after all - but they're quite far from being profitable, and for a good reason - they're not competitive internationally. the Germans and the Japanese simply make better cars.
That's more perception than fact. US cars are on par with foriegn brands in quality and reliability, testing higher in some areas, and lower in others. However, not that long ago this simply wasn't the case. The reputation for low quality cars persists. Once it's been achieved, it's hard to break.

There's also the problem of expenses such as the pention plans. The simply truth is US car manufactures sell their smaller cars at a loss, because things like that add to the production costs, and this has been the case for several years.




first, GDP percentages have only limited value. for example, in terms of GDP, Luxembourg is the richest country in the world. so what? the expressive power of that is near zero since the place is tiny. if you take major nations - China, Russia, India, Japan, European ones - the US is still by far in the lead, both GDP- and absolute figure-wise.

For things like military expendature, the percentage of the GDP is useful though. It shows how much you spend out of the money you have availiable to spend. This shows your priorities.

Also, you have to remember, a good portion of the US military budget isn't to fund the actual combat forces, but transport them from one place to the other. China has a larger military than the US, though not quite as well equiped, yet spends only a fraction of the money the US does. The reason, they don't maintain a logistics network capable of moving their forces around the globe on a moments notice. Having a military isn't that costly. Having one you can move anywhere in the world in a short period of time on the other hand is expensive.

i think you should look at this figure for a while:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/WorldMilitarySpending.jpg

and even taking US history only, in terms of absolute spending, even inflation-corrected, its at a maximum today.

And the US economy is larger today, so that number represents a smaller percentage of the US GDP.



I think I have just described some of the numerous US violations of the treaty in much technical detail, havent I?

Most of which were denying Russians access to submarines, or matters of being cheap and cutting costs. The US, however, has honored it's treaty obligations when it comes to reducing actual warheads. The main violation is the ABM system, which will almost certainly be withdrawn soon given the change in adminstrations.



thats what you read in most Western newspapers and hear on TV. it's rather blatant propaganda, though. i know very much on this subject, so I could explain it all in much detail on a case by case basis... but it would take forever. so let me just say this.. who did have to fight a pocket war instigated by someone else right at their border just 3 months ago? was it the US with Cuba or Mexico? or was it Russia?

Yes, because it's not like tensions were building between Georgia and Russia for quite some time. No, the US must have instigated it. The Georgians simply though the Russians were bluffing and the US would back them. They were wrong.



in general, thats correct. what you should think about though is - if the US does not seek an antagonistic relationship with Russia, why does it install first-strike weapons in Poland and the Czech Republic? why does it expand NATO eastward, directly violating agreements made in the 90s? why does it install puppet regimes in the Ukraine and Georgia, at Russia's border? why does it weasel its way out of nuclear disarmament treaties and not extend them? why does it instigate a war at Russia's border, after extensively supporting the perpetrator with weapons and military aid? why does it present the picture as "Russia invading" in the media?

just sit down and think about it all for a while. and then write what you think :D

ABMs are not first strike weapons, they're defensive weapons which would do nothing against a Russian attack. Hell, they aren't even in the right place to defend the US in that case. Take a globe. Now find the shortest path from Russia to the US. Here's a hint, it doesn't cross Poland.

As to the expansion of NATO, I'd expect that to stop once Bushy leaves office.

The US is extending disarmament treaties. The SORT treaty I linked to earlier for example was signed in 2002, and we have in fact complied. Of course it might not go far enough, but we'll see what the Obama adminstration comes up with.

The portrayal of Russia in the media isn't a matter of national policy, but ratings. American media companies are just that, media companies, not news companies. They show what gives the higher ratings, and that would be "ebil ruskies" as opposed to former soviet republic does something stupid.

edit: I don't think we'll be able to agree on certain issues, such as how much influence the US has over Israel, or how much blame the US should have for what other people do with the weapons we give them. However, I think we can agree on things like US foreign policy needs to be changed, and unwaivering support for Israel is counter productive to say the least.

[Mumitroll]

Actually it was as much a product of French policy as American policy, perhaps even more so. If France didn't attempt to retain to it's holdings there, the whole situation never would have happened to begin with.


largely agree.



So there's no difference between the US invadig and simply supplying a local faction? Sorry, but I don't buy it, and neither does anyone else. The world court said the US was responsible for supplying weapons and finding the contras, not commiting genocide.


there is minimal difference. it's a major crime either way. I really dont understand what you are arguing about. in the Nicaragua case the world basically made a verdict: US guilty. what is there left to defend about US policy here?



The little fact that the forces there were not under US command for one. Sure, you can make a strong case that the US should not have funded the contras once it became clear what kind of people they were. However, that doesn't mean you can hold the US accountable for all their actions.


i think it's fairly naive to think that the CIA at the time "did not know what kind of people" the Contras were. what did they think they were, a tea club? thats ridiculous. of course they knew what they were, and of course they had a good idea of what would happen. the CIA itself has used similar methods repeatedly, why should it care about them? the mujaheddin/Taliban case in Afghanistan is rather similar, except that now the same people are shooting at EU and US troops instead of Soviet ones.



Japan on the other hand had 40 fully equipped divisions in the home islands with another 25 ready, but lacking gear as well as thousands of aircraft. Sure, Japan couldn't win the war, but they weren't quite beaten either. Even with the atomic bombs and the Soviets invading the Kuriel islands a good number of Japanese officers wanted to continue fighting. In fact they even attempted a coup to stp the surrender from taking place. No, Japan could not have won, but they did have a realistic chance of repulsing the initial landings and getting a better deal. Without both the bombs and Russia entering the war, the Japanese likely wouldn't have surrendered until Kyushu fell at the very least, which would have been very bloody.


it's all speculation. in reality, the continental Manchurian JP forces were gone in less than a month. a simple blockade of Japan with a threat of using a nuclear bomb (perhaps after a prior demonstration on some far-off military object) would have already led to their surrender.



While the Russians may not have conducted strategic bombings, they did a fine job killing people on the ground.


Nothing comparable to the US or UK.



That's WWII for you, a madness that humanity must never again repeat.


nobody would disagree. the problem is that the US has been actively pushing the world towards a WWIII in the years since WWII.


So we're agreed that there are situations where Israel would use nuclear weapons then?

yes, but not as a first-strike. as a response to imminent defeat in an ongoing war, yes.



See buying arms doesn't give you logistics. It's not a matter of just throwing money at the problem either. It's a matter of making sure you have the trucks to bring up the food and ammunition for your soldiers, the repair crews to keep your vechicals operating, things like that. You can't buy a few thousand tanks and send them someplace. An army that tries it usually ends up dead.


right, but all of that is in the end also a question of money/effort. also, the more sophisticated technology becomes, the less important ground war actually is. while historically Arabs in general proved poor soldiers, if they obtain a very large number of modern tactical missiles (even with conventional warheads), and modern strike fighters, they could already make the situation very bad for Israel without actually invading it.


There's a big difference. One is saying, "ok, we have this plan in case we ever have to invade Lebanon, you guys think this would be ok?"

thats not an accurate formulation. the more correct one would be "Invade Lebanon as soon as you can. Do it. Now."


You honestly don't see the difference between presenting a plan, which the US approves on condition that they don't use the cluster bombs, and Israel throwing away that plan and using them anyway? It's basicly a doublecross.


it's an invented difference. you cling on to little technicalities of one particular conflict, if you go to many others you'll see the same picture everywhere. take for instance the proxy governments of South Vietnam, Georgia, or even Iraq under Saddam Hussein in the Iraq-Iran war, or Suharto in Indonesia. they were all directly supported by the US in their wars.



Because pro-israeli lobbiest groups have a lot of money and influence and speaking out against Israeli policies is spun by your political opponents as meaning you're anti-semetic. Look at the criticism Carter faced just after the 2006 war by suggesting that Israel made a mistake by invading Lebanon and shared responsibility for the Palestinian crisis.


correct! now why do you still think that Israel is not under direct US protection? can you imagine the criticism and uproar by the pro-Israeli lobbyist groups if there is a serious military threat to Israel and the US fails to help?



Except that Georgia fired first and isn't exactly a close ally. There are no treaties guarranteeing mutual defense either. Also no, sorry but the "western media" did report the facts.


hahaha, good joke. I was following Western media very closely right at the start of the war, even wrote a long article about it.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/bias-media/34491-georgia-vs-russia-miniwar-why-you-shouldnt-trust-your-tv.html

the absolutely overwhelming picture, in all major newspapers and all TV channels, was "Russia invades Georgia".


The facts were reported first, then it was changed.

the facts were not reported. CNN has not directly reported on the Georgian offensive on Tskhinvali on the night of August 8th even until now, only in the context of "Russians claim ... ", "Gorbachev claims ...". their own article titles: "Russian military pushes into Georgia", "NATO grapples with an angry bear", "Russian warplanes target Georgia", etc. feel the difference? the first time some real facts about the start of the war were actually clearly reported in major Anglosaxon media was the cover article in NY Times 5 days ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/europe/07georgia.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin



Funny how we overlooked getting one with our good buddy Israel, considering we've got one with so many other countries.


no treaty is needed with Israel. it's the 51st state. a treaty with it, from a US administration standpoint, is about as meaningful as a treaty with Florida.


Not likeing US foriegn policy is not the same as hating the US...

"hating" is a stronger version of "not liking". its just that a certain percentage of the people who dont like the US feel stronger about it. either way, its a pointless argument. unless you are completely oblivious to reality or have never been in other countries, it should be apparent to you that the vast majority in the world does not like the way the US behaves.


You forgot the war of 1812 where the British burned down Washington DC.

umm.. ok... tbh it was so small that I didnt even know of it. the far better known 1812 war is Napoleon vs Russia (about 20 times as large).


Oh it would most certainly change it. Nuclear weapons would then be considered a vaild weapon.

oh really. against whom? Saudi Arabia?



Wiping out the supporting population. A nuclear strike on the US by terrorists would push the US in that direction, not the "oh we should revise our foriegn policy so they won't hate us" direction.


that would be a great way towards suicide. also, "wiping out the supporting population" would mean.. a nuke on Saudi Arabia? who's gonna provide the oil then?




However, massive attacks on the US will only put the American population into the military action camp and give the neo-cons power once again.

perhaps. it's a stupid and dangerous reaction though. you can call it "American psyche".. I just call it idiocy. a kindergarten level reaction. a simple analogy is something like this: a big bully with a knife beats up everyone on the block except a few other big kids with knives he's afraid of touching. some little kids team up and secretly drop a flowerpot on him or something in revenge. he is enraged and randomly beats up unrelated little kids, and even goes so far as to pick fights with the other big kids, who obviously respond by becoming more aggressive as well. every juvenile psychologist will tell you that the likely way this situation is going to end is with the bully or some other kid getting stabbed. the correct way out of this situation is - obviously - to work with the bully and make him understand that he should stop it. in RL, this is most commonly accomplished by other kids ganging up on him and beating him up. now, to transport this analogy to the real world, the big kids with knives are the states with nuclear ICBMs - the difference from knives being that you are practically guaranteed to be able to stab back. sadly, there is no effective way for other states to gang up on the US and "beat it up", so the only real chance for the change of the bully psychology has to come from inside. or, as an alternative, he would have to get stabbed so bad that he wouldn't be in any position to bully anymore. which, transferred to real life, is not something that we all want.



Yet they still bothered to try. I'm taking about a US that wouldn't even bother with that, which is exactly what we'd get if terrorists detonated a nuclear device in a US city.

whether they have a pretext or not, it doesnt change anything in the big picture. the actions count, not the words. its not like anyone remembers the exact pretexts for US invading Vietnam or the USSR invading Afghanistan.


As I thought you don't understand what it means. It means, no attempts at coiliation building, no trying to get support. It means the US would go in, bomb the hell out of a place, and pull out. No pretending to justify it, just bombing.


so WHAT? for the place that gets bombed its all the same thing. and the only difference would be that everybody else would be much more hostile to the US, compared to having a proper propaganda campaign tune the majority into the right mindset the bombing.


I'm just claiming that achieving that goal for itself wasn't important to Bushy.

hoho then you're probably not quite in the clear on the background of the Bush administration. or the "oil administration" as some people call it. practically everyone there has an oil background. Bush himself was subsequently in the board of 2 oil companies - Arbusto and Spectrum 7 (and later Harken) - both of which (coincidentally) kinda failed. Cheney is a major oil man as well. Rice is a former Chevron director. etc.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1138009.stm


It is a sensible idea, if one ignores the human price after all.

ya, sensible, much in the same way as the Nazi Lebensraum idea was sensible.. "why do those backward people need their land and resources.. all that could also belong to us, the proud Aryan race".


Though I'd argue that D-Day was an imporant battle, as it opened a second front against Germany.

it would have been important in 1941/42 - which is when Stalin was desperately pushing the US and UK for it. Roosevelt and Churchill famously refused in order to let Stalin sacrifice his people and win it by himself. in June 1944, Germany had already largely lost the war, and the main reasoning behind the landing was not to give all of Europe to Stalin.


Except you're forgetting one little detail, the US never invaded North Vietnam. Many of those civilians killed were South Vietnamese killed in battles. So, no you're comparison doesn't really hold up.

the US invaded South Vietnam - where nobody except for the US-installed proxy government wanted it - and bombed the hell out of it when people resisted.


See, once again you're wrong. The US didn't invade Vietnam, we were asked there, admittedly by a government we helped install, to defend them against the North.

hahaha. it's exactly the same thing as when the USSR invades Afghanistan after installing a proxy communist government there (with about zero popular support). ya sure, it's "helping"... on paper. its like when Nazis invade the Czech Republic "helping" the Sudetendeutsche minority there. xcept that tehre wasnt even any such minority in Vietnam.


Yet you're still more than willing to give that share of the blame to the US.

the USAF participated in the bombing of Dresden to a similar extent as the UK. on february 13th/14th, the USAAF 8th division was supposed to start the bombing, but the weather was bad, so the RAF took over with overall 539 planes in two waves. on 14th/15th, the USAAF bombed, with 431 bombers (316 of them bombing Dresden) and 784 protecting fighters,

the firebombing of Tokyo (and obviously the nuclear bombs) was US work exclusively.


Yet why is it that North Vietnam survived relatively intact? Maybe because most of that ordinance was dropped on supply lines in the jungle rather than Hanoi? The question isn't the number of bombs used, but where they were dropped. For most of the war major cities like Hanoi were off limits to US bombers. So no, it was not a total war.

thats true to an extent. but my point, as you may have already noticed, that the main target of US attacks was not North, but *SOUTH* Vietnam. Against the South Vietnamese population (which was harboring and supporting the Vietcong), it was a total war alright, with horrible atrocities.

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/macarthur/inequality/papers/MiguelVietnamBombs.pdf

a random quote: "only 11 of 3,500 Quang Tri villages were left unbombed by the end of the war"


Funny, you'd think in such a climate politicians running on an anti-American platform would do well. That they don't is rather telling.

it's mainly historically rooted. while the USSR and the Iron Curtain existed, there wasnt really any option of any anti-Americanism for West European countries, as they would not be able to defend themselves against the USSR alone (well except UK and France maybe). most of the politicians that are around today still more or less have the mindset and the connections of that era. the young ones gradually tend to be more and more independent, but it will probably take another couple of decades for old EU to become more independent of the US politically. also, the US is a major trade partner for most EU countries, and able to exert much economic pressure as well. the newer EU members are an even easier case - for now, they mostly simply whore themselves out for US military and economic aid.


That's more perception than fact.

perhaps, but I've rather good factual evidence for that :D i've driven so many cars - several hundreds - in so many places, that I think I can tell. the best highend cars (and the best cars overall) are German ones. just ask around among car enthusiasts (who have money to afford German cars). Japan makes lots of reliable mid-range cars, but few top level ones - the GT-R being one recent exception. Italy makes some really flashy highend cars like Lambos (in the meantime German owned) and Ferraris, but tbh they are overall, for various reasons, not as good as a Porsche - although a lot of fun. the US.. it's hard for me to name even one good US car. the Ford GT maybe. although it famously kept breaking down when Jeremy Clarkson bought it.. the Corvette Z06 might also be not too bad - I am currently trying to get one for a test drive - although I already know I am not getting it because of its dismal interior.


And the US economy is larger today, so that number represents a smaller percentage of the US GDP.

except that that number is also much higher today.


The US, however, has honored it's treaty obligations when it comes to reducing actual warheads.

the problem is that the number of warheads even after reduction is far more than enough for US/Russia to destroy each other. and where the US is weaseling around is in the very crucial aspects of delivering those warheads and intercepting Russian ones.


The main violation is the ABM system, which will almost certainly be withdrawn soon given the change in adminstrations.

remains to be seen. so far I havent seen anything promising from Obama in this direction. his Berlin speech was.. hmm.. not so good. lots of Cold War time terminology and pathos. while it had a bit of a rockstar atmosphere in Berlin, it was received rather sceptically among serious political commentators here.


Yes, because it's not like tensions were building between Georgia and Russia for quite some time. No, the US must have instigated it. The Georgians simply though the Russians were bluffing and the US would back them. They were wrong.


thats a typical uninformed opinion. please go read my article on this above. it cites many other sources.



ABMs are not first strike weapons, they're defensive weapons which would do nothing against a Russian attack.

ABMs are a first strike weapon exactly BECAUSE they would be useless against a Russian first strike. they are ONLY useful in the event that the US does a first strike, and the ABMs are used to intercept the *remaining* Russian missiles.



Hell, they aren't even in the right place to defend the US in that case. Take a globe. Now find the shortest path from Russia to the US. Here's a hint, it doesn't cross Poland.


no. here are the flight paths towards some major US cities for the Russian BMs started from the Kozelsk base and some of the other more eastward bases:

http://programtree.com/pro.gif

as you can see the Polish/Czech Republic ABM system covers the Kozelsk (westernmost) base almost completely, and the trick is in particular, that (different from the existing base in Norway) intercepting BMs in the initial acceleration phase of the flight is FAR more reliable than in the end phase - and the missiles that are to be stationed in Poland are close enough, have a sufficient launch speed and a much better thrust/weight ratio than the BMs themselves, so they could do that with the BMs launched from the Western Russia bases. they cant do that with either Iranian or North Korean missiles since their launch sites are simply too far. another interesting fact that is not known to non-experts is that the ABM system in Poland/Czech Republic/Norway is useless for defending Europe itself - it is ineffective against modern BMs in mid- and late flight phase, and especially against MIRVed ones. so the only theoretical chance that it could intercept something from Iran or North Korea is if it would be a very lowtech BM with no separable warhead, no evasive capability, and no false targets. while in reality both already have more advanced BMs already now - Iran just recently tested one yesterday - and could rather easily get to the level of making them immune to the Poland ABM. it's a few minor technical steps. if the US wanted a reliable ABM system against Iran, it would have to be located near the Persian Gulf, to be able to intercept Iranian BMs in the acceleration phase. in fact Russia has previously offered the US to establish a joint ABM base in Azerbaidjan - which would be able to do exactly that. yet the US refused with vague reasoning...

so, to summarize, for anyone well-informed, its clear that its only real purpose is as a first-strike backup (as well as a method of political/military pressure) against Russia.



The portrayal of Russia in the media isn't a matter of national policy, but ratings. American media companies are just that, media companies, not news companies. They show what gives the higher ratings, and that would be "ebil ruskies" as opposed to former soviet republic does something stupid.

thats again a rather naive opinion. if that were the case, American media would be reporting on lots of spectacular things that you've never heard of. the attack on Tskhinvali for example was a most spectacular thing - Grads tracing the sky, tanks firing and burning, journalists running in the streets under Georgian fire... just watch the Russian TV footage on YouTube.

its a long story, but in a nutshell the US media are corporate controlled, and the corporations main interest is not actually the viewers. its the advertisers. who are in turn mostly also large companies. who want a certain picture of the world, and not something different. it's all very funny when seen from the outside - while many Americans have the illusion that they have a very wide spectrum of liberal media, in reality their major media span from their "ultra-left" to "ultra-right" is quite narrow, and waaay to the right (pro-corporate-interest, pro-national-interest) as compared to reality. it looks rather outlandish to most educated people visiting the US for the first time.

a similar effect exists in most EU countries, but to a lesser extent. the ones who report on this stuff much more objectively are interestingly mostly Asian papers and journals, since they sit outside and their advertisers/owners dont ahve such a major interest in drawing a pro-US picture of events.

anyhow, its a big subject, and others have written on it much better than i could do here. just read something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent for starters. its rather dry, and already a bit dated, but extremely convincing. nothing much has changed since the time it was written, too.

[Kamui4356]

there is minimal difference. it's a major crime either way. I really dont understand what you are arguing about. in the Nicaragua case the world basically made a verdict: US guilty. what is there left to defend about US policy here?

I'm argueing that the US was not found guilty for the crimes you claimed it was, ie genocide. Found guilty for supporting a militia in a foreign state, yes, but not genocide.


i think it's fairly naive to think that the CIA at the time "did not know what kind of people" the Contras were. what did they think they were, a tea club? thats ridiculous. of course they knew what they were, and of course they had a good idea of what would happen. the CIA itself has used similar methods repeatedly, why should it care about them? the mujaheddin/Taliban case in Afghanistan is rather similar, except that now the same people are shooting at EU and US troops instead of Soviet ones.

Oh, I'm sure the CIA knew full well they'd be brutal, though not necessarily the extent of their brutality. Of course they were fighting "commies" so they probably didn't care. All wars are brutal, that's a given. What I'm argueing here is there should have been a line set on how much we'd be willing to tolerate before we cut off support.




it's all speculation. in reality, the continental Manchurian JP forces were gone in less than a month. a simple blockade of Japan with a threat of using a nuclear bomb (perhaps after a prior demonstration on some far-off military object) would have already led to their surrender.

Informed speculation based on the forces the Japanese had left, easy enough to look up, as well as the mind set of their officers, demonstrated by their attempted coup. As long as Japan had the forces necessary to repulse an initial invasion, which they apparently did, there would be no reason for them to surrender.




Nothing comparable to the US or UK.

Only because they didn't have to. The US and Britain handled the strategic bombing.


nobody would disagree. the problem is that the US has been actively pushing the world towards a WWIII in the years since WWII.

Which is why the US has jumped at every chance to start it, like moving into east Germany when the Soviets blockaded Berlin, invaded Cuba during the missile crisis, conquered North Vietnam, sent troops into Afganistan after the Russians did... Oh wait, that's right they didn't do any of that. That was short sighted of those adminstrations. They could have had WWIII right there but blew it. Hell, why bother to wait for an excuse? Just launch against Russia, any civilization that survives isn't going to remember who fired first and that can be done at any time.




yes, but not as a first-strike. as a response to imminent defeat in an ongoing war, yes.

So they wouldn't see an imminent nuclear strike as an imminent defeat?


right, but all of that is in the end also a question of money/effort. also, the more sophisticated technology becomes, the less important ground war actually is. while historically Arabs in general proved poor soldiers, if they obtain a very large number of modern tactical missiles (even with conventional warheads), and modern strike fighters, they could already make the situation very bad for Israel without actually invading it.

I'd have thought that the NATO bombing campaign in Serbia would have disproved that. Sure anything moving on the ground is dead if your enemy has air superiority, but in dug in positions you can retain most of your combat capability. Not to mention that Israel has a modern, well trained airforce of it's own. If it's used defensivly, it'd be tough to gain that air superiority unless they managed to take out the israeli airfields in a first strike.




thats not an accurate formulation. the more correct one would be "Invade Lebanon as soon as you can. Do it. Now."

Which is a sign of the Bushy adminstration's incompotence, as it pushed US intrests in Lebanon back 10 years.



it's an invented difference. you cling on to little technicalities of one particular conflict, if you go to many others you'll see the same picture everywhere. take for instance the proxy governments of South Vietnam, Georgia, or even Iraq under Saddam Hussein in the Iraq-Iran war, or Suharto in Indonesia. they were all directly supported by the US in their wars.

It's not an invented difference. If the US signs off on the plan on the condition they dont' do X, and they go ahead and do x anyway, there's a problem. I call it going rouge, and the US should have cut off a shipment of shiny new bombs to Israel. Instead the US speed up the shipment of shiny new bombs. After all, Israel can do no wrong.:rolleyes:


correct! now why do you still think that Israel is not under direct US protection? can you imagine the criticism and uproar by the pro-Israeli lobbyist groups if there is a serious military threat to Israel and the US fails to help?

Help doesn't mean sending troops though. Sure the US would sell the Israelis more weapons. Hell, in that case they might even get some F-22s, though I wouldn't bet on it. That doesn't mean the US would send troops.




hahaha, good joke. I was following Western media very closely right at the start of the war, even wrote a long article about it.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/bias-media/34491-georgia-vs-russia-miniwar-why-you-shouldnt-trust-your-tv.html

the absolutely overwhelming picture, in all major newspapers and all TV channels, was "Russia invades Georgia".

Which is true, Russia did invade. However, they also reported that Georgia moved into South Ossetia to trigger the Russian invasion.

the facts were not reported. CNN has not directly reported on the Georgian offensive on Tskhinvali on the night of August 8th even until now, only in the context of "Russians claim ... ", "Gorbachev claims ...". their own article titles: "Russian military pushes into Georgia", "NATO grapples with an angry bear", "Russian warplanes target Georgia", etc. feel the difference? the first time some real facts about the start of the war were actually clearly reported in major Anglosaxon media was the cover article in NY Times 5 days ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/europe/07georgia.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

If you're just going to look at headlines and ignore the content of the articles, you're absolutely correct. However if you read the articles you'll find they they mention Georgia's attack on South Ossetia.

Reports: 6 die as Georgia shells South Ossetia (http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/08/02/georgia.ossetia/index.html?iref=newssearch)
This was a few days before the main attack.

Russians accused of 'bombing' Georgia as violence escalates (http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/08/07/georgia.ossetia/index.html?iref=newssearch)
This one was coverage of Georgia's initial attack on Tskhinvali before the Russians counterattacked. Yes, it still has an anti-Russian spin to it, but it does make clear that Georgia attacked first and provides some background.






no treaty is needed with Israel. it's the 51st state. a treaty with it, from a US administration standpoint, is about as meaningful as a treaty with Florida.

Which is why the US has always committed troops to defend Israel. Oh wait, they haven't. You can claim what you want, but the facts say something else.


"hating" is a stronger version of "not liking". its just that a certain percentage of the people who dont like the US feel stronger about it. either way, its a pointless argument. unless you are completely oblivious to reality or have never been in other countries, it should be apparent to you that the vast majority in the world does not like the way the US behaves.

Yay for shifting goal posts! So it goes from most of the world is anti-American to most of the world doesn't like US policies? That hating is a stronger version of not liking does not mean they can be used interchangable. You said it yourself, most Americans don't like US policies. That doesn't mean most Americans hate their own country. That's one of the reasons Obama won, as he said he'd change many of those policies. Whether he actually follows through and say engages in diplomacy with Iran and works out a deal or not has yet to be seen.


umm.. ok... tbh it was so small that I didnt even know of it. the far better known 1812 war is Napoleon vs Russia (about 20 times as large).

I don't think that excuse really works. This isn't a news story that got buried because something bigger happened.


oh really. against whom? Saudi Arabia?

Off hand I'd say the region of Pakistan where Bin Ladin is believed to be hiding.



that would be a great way towards suicide. also, "wiping out the supporting population" would mean.. a nuke on Saudi Arabia? who's gonna provide the oil then?

The US gets suprisingly little of its oil from the middle east actually. We get most of it from Canada and Mexico. If we lost middle eastern oil, we could make up the difference by fuel rationing and banning cars that get less than 35 MPG.




perhaps. it's a stupid and dangerous reaction though. you can call it "American psyche".. I just call it idiocy. a kindergarten level reaction. a simple analogy is something like this: a big bully with a knife beats up everyone on the block except a few other big kids with knives he's afraid of touching. some little kids team up and secretly drop a flowerpot on him or something in revenge. he is enraged and randomly beats up unrelated little kids, and even goes so far as to pick fights with the other big kids, who obviously respond by becoming more aggressive as well. every juvenile psychologist will tell you that the likely way this situation is going to end is with the bully or some other kid getting stabbed. the correct way out of this situation is - obviously - to work with the bully and make him understand that he should stop it. in RL, this is most commonly accomplished by other kids ganging up on him and beating him up. now, to transport this analogy to the real world, the big kids with knives are the states with nuclear ICBMs - the difference from knives being that you are practically guaranteed to be able to stab back. sadly, there is no effective way for other states to gang up on the US and "beat it up", so the only real chance for the change of the bully psychology has to come from inside. or, as an alternative, he would have to get stabbed so bad that he wouldn't be in any position to bully anymore. which, transferred to real life, is not something that we all want.

That's a pretty bad anology. If you wanted to make it more accurate, it'd be, the bully kills the families of the kids that drop the pot on him. If you want to make it even more accurate you could change the bully to a big kid who means well, but ends up hurting others because he doesn't think through to the consequences that his actions cause and is just so much bigger and has a short temper.



whether they have a pretext or not, it doesnt change anything in the big picture. the actions count, not the words. its not like anyone remembers the exact pretexts for US invading Vietnam or the USSR invading Afghanistan.

It changes a lot actually. Right now if the US can't find a good pretext, they simply won't invade. In this case, they wouldn't care and invade anyway.


so WHAT? for the place that gets bombed its all the same thing. and the only difference would be that everybody else would be much more hostile to the US, compared to having a proper propaganda campaign tune the majority into the right mindset the bombing.

It's a difference between the place getting bombed or not actually. They US hasn't bombed Iran for example, because it doesn't have a good pretext to go in. If they US no longer cares about that, what's to stop them?




hoho then you're probably not quite in the clear on the background of the Bush administration. or the "oil administration" as some people call it. practically everyone there has an oil background. Bush himself was subsequently in the board of 2 oil companies - Arbusto and Spectrum 7 (and later Harken) - both of which (coincidentally) kinda failed. Cheney is a major oil man as well. Rice is a former Chevron director. etc.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1138009.stm

I'm well aware of that. However, it does not in fact explain Bushy's invasion of Iraq by itself, nor many of the other actions he's taken as president. However, if you view his actions through the prism of him trying to succeed where his father in his mind failed, everything makes sense. The invasion of Iraq, the expansion of NATO, his support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, it all comes into focus.




ya, sensible, much in the same way as the Nazi Lebensraum idea was sensible.. "why do those backward people need their land and resources.. all that could also belong to us, the proud Aryan race".

So you're saying securing a vital resource that your economy depends on is not sensible? I did point out that it's if you ignore the human cost.




it would have been important in 1941/42 - which is when Stalin was desperately pushing the US and UK for it. Roosevelt and Churchill famously refused in order to let Stalin sacrifice his people and win it by himself. in June 1944, Germany had already largely lost the war, and the main reasoning behind the landing was not to give all of Europe to Stalin.

The US and Britain could not have invaded in 1941 or 1942. They were both still building up their forces. 1943, maybe, as there was that invasion of Italy. Also, if you remove the threat of an allied invasion of France, that frees up 59 German divisions to deploy against the Russians. Considering the Russian advance was already stretching their logistics to the limit, the transfer of nearly 60 divisions to the eastern front would have changed the situation dramaticly. Let's not remove the threat though, just the invasion itself. Transfer even 20 of those divisions to the Eastern front, and the Russian advance is probably stopped. The Russians then either have to regroup and try again, or make a seperate peace, which Stalin did threaten to do. Germany most certainly couldn't "win", but without Normandy, the third reich may have been able to preserve itself. Normandy was the point where that became impossible.




the US invaded South Vietnam - where nobody except for the US-installed proxy government wanted it - and bombed the hell out of it when people resisted.

South Vietnam asked for US aid against North Vietnam. That the US installed the government was irrelevant. They were fighting a foreign invasion. Of course, had the US instead backed Ho Chi Min when he came to them seekig assistance and negoiated a deal to get France to withdraw there wouldn'thave been a North and South Vietnam to begin with, and Vietnam as a whole would have been a US ally.



hahaha. it's exactly the same thing as when the USSR invades Afghanistan after installing a proxy communist government there (with about zero popular support). ya sure, it's "helping"... on paper. its like when Nazis invade the Czech Republic "helping" the Sudetendeutsche minority there. xcept that tehre wasnt even any such minority in Vietnam.

There's actually quite a big difference. For starters, the Government in South Vietnam had effective control of the country. The communist government in Afganstan didn't. Also, the South Vietnamese were fighting against North Vietnam. Though I'd be willing to condeed that the Soviets did not in fact invade, but were invited in.

Your Germany example though, the Germans were not invited in by any official government. They went in, then forced the government there to accept the annexation of the Sudetenland. It's completely different from either the US war in Vietnam, or the Soviet war in Afganistan, as neither nation claimed that territory as their own.




the USAF participated in the bombing of Dresden to a similar extent as the UK. on february 13th/14th, the USAAF 8th division was supposed to start the bombing, but the weather was bad, so the RAF took over with overall 539 planes in two waves. on 14th/15th, the USAAF bombed, with 431 bombers (316 of them bombing Dresden) and 784 protecting fighters,

You'll note that the US bombers did not drop incindary bombs in those raids, but high explosive, and concentraited their attacks on industrial targets in the city. For the US, there was nothing special about the operation.

the firebombing of Tokyo (and obviously the nuclear bombs) was US work exclusively.

Did I claim otherwise? I only take exception to you blaming the US for firebombing of Dresden, when it was not the US bombers who dropped the incindaries




thats true to an extent. but my point, as you may have already noticed, that the main target of US attacks was not North, but *SOUTH* Vietnam. Against the South Vietnamese population (which was harboring and supporting the Vietcong), it was a total war alright, with horrible atrocities.

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/macarthur/inequality/papers/MiguelVietnamBombs.pdf

a random quote: "only 11 of 3,500 Quang Tri villages were left unbombed by the end of the war"

I'm not claiming there were no atrocities. I'm claiming that it was not a total war, as evidenced by the lack of consitant US attacks on the North. In a total war, that would not have been the case.



it's mainly historically rooted. while the USSR and the Iron Curtain existed, there wasnt really any option of any anti-Americanism for West European countries, as they would not be able to defend themselves against the USSR alone (well except UK and France maybe). most of the politicians that are around today still more or less have the mindset and the connections of that era. the young ones gradually tend to be more and more independent, but it will probably take another couple of decades for old EU to become more independent of the US politically. also, the US is a major trade partner for most EU countries, and able to exert much economic pressure as well. the newer EU members are an even easier case - for now, they mostly simply whore themselves out for US military and economic aid.

You know, it almost sounds like you're saying it's in the interests of European countries to have such relations with the US, for now at least. I would point out that the trade partner thing does work both ways. ;)




perhaps, but I've rather good factual evidence for that :D i've driven so many cars - several hundreds - in so many places, that I think I can tell. the best highend cars (and the best cars overall) are German ones. just ask around among car enthusiasts (who have money to afford German cars). Japan makes lots of reliable mid-range cars, but few top level ones - the GT-R being one recent exception. Italy makes some really flashy highend cars like Lambos (in the meantime German owned) and Ferraris, but tbh they are overall, for various reasons, not as good as a Porsche - although a lot of fun. the US.. it's hard for me to name even one good US car. the Ford GT maybe. although it famously kept breaking down when Jeremy Clarkson bought it.. the Corvette Z06 might also be not too bad - I am currently trying to get one for a test drive - although I already know I am not getting it because of its dismal interior.

If you're only talking about high end cars, yeah you'd have a case. I'm talking about low to mid-end cars, the kind most of the people who have a car actually own. Think ford focus, honda civic, those kinds. I'd agree that the US auto industry most certainly does have a lack of high end sports cars, but when it comes to more common cars, US offerings are much better than their reputation would suggest.




except that that number is also much higher today.

Only if you compare it to the numbers prior to WWII, back when the US didn't really see the need to have a large standing army at all, and the navy got varying levels of support depending on the ideals of the adminstration at the time.



the problem is that the number of warheads even after reduction is far more than enough for US/Russia to destroy each other. and where the US is weaseling around is in the very crucial aspects of delivering those warheads and intercepting Russian ones.

Of course, even with the reductions, we'd each have somewhere between 2 and 3 thousand warheads. It's still a big drop from numbers in the 10s of thousands both the US and Russia once had.

As for interepting Russian warheads, assume an 80% success rate for interception. Now assume 2000 as the number of russian warheads. We have what, 10 that will be stationed in Poland? That leaves 1992 warheads unintercepted, ignoring that a Russian strike on the US would not pass over europe. So let's say the US wanted to stop a Russian strike. At 80% success rate the US would need a minimum of 2500 ABMs. Now then, what happens if the Russians then decide that getting a few major US cities is good enough, so they concentrate on them since some will likely get through. Sure the US might have enough AMBs to intercept those Russian missiles, but not enough to do so at any one location. Thus the US now needs more ABMs to protect it's vital targets. All of a sudden that 2500 minimum isn't going to cut it, and you'll in fact need 10 times that. If the Russians then build more missiles, the US then needs to build even more ABMs. It's a losing game cost wise. No matter how good the system, you'll always need massive redundancy, and that's assuming an unrealisticly high success rate. Further it takes a much more advanced guidence package to hit another missile than it does for that first one to hit a city.




remains to be seen. so far I havent seen anything promising from Obama in this direction. his Berlin speech was.. hmm.. not so good. lots of Cold War time terminology and pathos. while it had a bit of a rockstar atmosphere in Berlin, it was received rather sceptically among serious political commentators here.

Yes, it does remain to be seen.




thats a typical uninformed opinion. please go read my article on this above. it cites many other sources.
Which is all speculation.



ABMs are a first strike weapon exactly BECAUSE they would be useless against a Russian first strike. they are ONLY useful in the event that the US does a first strike, and the ABMs are used to intercept the *remaining* Russian missiles.

no. here are the flight paths towards some major US cities for the Russian BMs started from the Kozelsk base and some of the other more eastward bases:

http://programtree.com/pro.gif

A base that can easily saturate the ABMs. There simply aren't enough. In a scenerio where a first strike is a possibility, both sides would have their missiles on standby. Most likely the Russians owuld be able to launch before their silos were hit, and vice-versa. Then there are ballistic missile subs. They'd be insufficient to cover a retalitory strike as well.

as you can see the Polish/Czech Republic ABM system covers the Kozelsk (westernmost) base almost completely, and the trick is in particular, that (different from the existing base in Norway) intercepting BMs in the initial acceleration phase of the flight is FAR more reliable than in the end phase - and the missiles that are to be stationed in Poland are close enough, have a sufficient launch speed and a much better thrust/weight ratio than the BMs themselves, so they could do that with the BMs launched from the Western Russia bases. they cant do that with either Iranian or North Korean missiles since their launch sites are simply too far. another interesting fact that is not known to non-experts is that the ABM system in Poland/Czech Republic/Norway is useless for defending Europe itself - it is ineffective against modern BMs in mid- and late flight phase, and especially against MIRVed ones. so the only theoretical chance that it could intercept something from Iran or North Korea is if it would be a very lowtech BM with no separable warhead, no evasive capability, and no false targets. while in reality both already have more advanced BMs already now - Iran just recently tested one yesterday - and could rather easily get to the level of making them immune to the Poland ABM. it's a few minor technical steps. if the US wanted a reliable ABM system against Iran, it would have to be located near the Persian Gulf, to be able to intercept Iranian BMs in the acceleration phase. in fact Russia has previously offered the US to establish a joint ABM base in Azerbaidjan - which would be able to do exactly that. yet the US refused with vague reasoning...

One slight problem there. By the time they could cover the range, the Russian missile would be out of it's initial boost phase. The only way for it to work is if the ABMs were launched first. The thing you have to remember about the US ABMs, they don't work. They have about a 50% success rate, against targets of known trajectory. Against actual enemy missiles, they'd be lucky to have a 25% success rate.

so, to summarize, for anyone well-informed, its clear that its only real purpose is as a first-strike backup (as well as a method of political/military pressure) against Russia.

To anyone informed about the actual capabilities of the missiles, it's clear they'd be useless as a first strike backup. Oh I fully agree that part of their purpose is to apply political presure on Russia, however, I disagree that they're an effective means of doing so.





thats again a rather naive opinion. if that were the case, American media would be reporting on lots of spectacular things that you've never heard of. the attack on Tskhinvali for example was a most spectacular thing - Grads tracing the sky, tanks firing and burning, journalists running in the streets under Georgian fire... just watch the Russian TV footage on YouTube.

The problem there, Americans don't want to see things that would make it look like they're supporting the wrong side. They'd change the channel to another media outlet who report on the "ebil ruskies", and thus lose ratings.

its a long story, but in a nutshell the US media are corporate controlled, and the corporations main interest is not actually the viewers. its the advertisers. who are in turn mostly also large companies. who want a certain picture of the world, and not something different. it's all very funny when seen from the outside - while many Americans have the illusion that they have a very wide spectrum of liberal media, in reality their major media span from their "ultra-left" to "ultra-right" is quite narrow, and waaay to the right (pro-corporate-interest, pro-national-interest) as compared to reality. it looks rather outlandish to most educated people visiting the US for the first time.

a similar effect exists in most EU countries, but to a lesser extent. the ones who report on this stuff much more objectively are interestingly mostly Asian papers and journals, since they sit outside and their advertisers/owners dont ahve such a major interest in drawing a pro-US picture of events.

anyhow, its a big subject, and others have written on it much better than i could do here. just read something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent for starters. its rather dry, and already a bit dated, but extremely convincing. nothing much has changed since the time it was written, too.


That's because that's what gets them the ratings. The ratings then determine how much they can charge for ads. The US media companies only care about that ad money. Thus they'll show whatever gets them the higher ratings needed for higher ad revenue. It just so happens that's a US centric view of the world. That's what Americans want to see. Though I think we largely agree here, only differing on how much an influence one part of the equation is. I say getting the higher ratings is more important than the adgenda of the sponsers, you say the adgenda of the sponsers has the bigger impact. I think we can agree that both play a factor though.

[Mumitroll]

I'm argueing that the US was not found guilty for the crimes you claimed it was, ie genocide. Found guilty for supporting a militia in a foreign state, yes, but not genocide.

in the Nicaragua case it was called "unlawful use of force" in World Court legal terms. in reality that equals instigating and financing the killing, torturing, etc of many thousands of people. in the Vietnam case its much more clear altogether - there it was just outright genocide against the South Vietnamese population.


What I'm argueing here is there should have been a line set on how much we'd be willing to tolerate before we cut off support.


thats very naive. the CIA obviously doesnt care at all what methods the various militant groups it supports use. there's a myriad examples for that. the most prominent one is simply bin Laden himself - a former CIA ally. another prominent former ally was Somoza. another was Suharto. etc etc.


Informed speculation based on the forces the Japanese had left, easy enough to look up, as well as the mind set of their officers, demonstrated by their attempted coup. As long as Japan had the forces necessary to repulse an initial invasion, which they apparently did, there would be no reason for them to surrender.


a demonstration of a nuclear bomb effect on a military target would have been in all likelihood sufficient. yet Truman &co discarded this in favor of a greater horror effect (and, not to neglect, making a larger impression on Stalin).


Which is why the US has jumped at every chance to start it, like moving into east Germany when the Soviets blockaded Berlin,

well, first of all, the US troops never even got to Berlin. it was deep within Soviet-occupied territory, and the Allied zones of Berlin were given to them as a kind of token recognition by Stalin.

also, at that point they couldnt really afford it. the Soviet army in Europe was far stronger than the US-UK forces at the time, and nuclear bombs were not (yet) readily available - although available to the US in a longer term. Still, Truman's quote was "It is too risky to engage in this [a suggested armed convoy to West Berlin] due to the consequence of war."


invaded Cuba during the missile crisis

lol? your history is all wrong there. Cuba, for a change, was a case where the USSR had nothing to do with its revolution (in which another US proxy puppet tyrant - Batista - was overthrown by a popular movement) and was actually indeed invited (even as much as begged) by Castro to install missiles there. the Kennedy administration actions though - that was insane. that was closest the world got to a WWIII so far. and for what? for the idea that a sovereign nation near the US cannot be allowed to get arms from another sovereign nation - which at the time, coincidentally, already had exactly such arms aimed at it at its border (in Turkey).

we all have to thank whatever gods we believe in that Kennedy himself didnt authorize the armed invasion of Cuba - which was strongly proposed by the US military lead. what they didnt know at the time was that the Soviet missile division in Cuba under Generals Pliev and Gribkov had already deployed short-range tactical Luna missiles with nuclear warheads aimed at Florida, and had a command to retaliate in case of a US invasion. that would've been the end for Florida, and for many other places as well.


So they wouldn't see an imminent nuclear strike as an imminent defeat?

you can never say when a nuclear strike is "imminent". you can only declare a certain condition when you'll consider yourself free to perform one, and hope that the others are sane enough not to let it come to that.



I'd have thought that the NATO bombing campaign in Serbia would have disproved that.

why so. it did in fact prove the opposite - even a (small) nation with fairly modern technology can be largely defeated and forced into a government change with (albeit very large) purely air superiority.


Not to mention that Israel has a modern, well trained airforce of it's own. If it's used defensivly, it'd be tough to gain that air superiority unless they managed to take out the israeli airfields in a first strike.


Arab nations dont have any problems in obtaining modern warplanes as well. although in terms of training - yeah here they are historically not so good. but well, overwhelming quantity beats quality, even nowadays.


Help doesn't mean sending troops though. Sure the US would sell the Israelis more weapons. Hell, in that case they might even get some F-22s, though I wouldn't bet on it. That doesn't mean the US would send troops.

the US would send troops alright - if it were actually necessary. since 1948, it never was. normally, unless the Arab nations unite and attack, as in 1973, Israel dominates everything around it because it has a very modern, well-equipped, well-trained, and dedicated army. even in 1973, although that was more of a draw result, Israel was merely taken by surprise and did manage to turn the Arab advantage into nothing within a few days (albeit with substantial losses) - youve read the Kissinger quote above.

regarding F-22s, they arent for export at the moment, but it's clear that Israel will get them first ultimately (in a few years when they get older probably).


Which is true, Russia did invade. However, they also reported that Georgia moved into South Ossetia to trigger the Russian invasion.

they reported jack. they may have mentioned it as an unconfirmed footnote, but it totally went under in a stream of panicky rhetoric a la "Russian bear bares its fangs", "Russian tanks roll into Georgia as cities burn" etc.

why do you think the mere fact that there are some official Western observers who were, in fact, there at the time of the Georgian attack, and who, in fact say that it was the Georgians who attacked first, is treated as a big surprise and revelation and deserves a cover page headline in the NY Times - 3 months later?

their reporting is a complete joke.


If you're just going to look at headlines and ignore the content of the articles, you're absolutely correct. However if you read the articles you'll find they they mention Georgia's attack on South Ossetia.

Reports: 6 die as Georgia shells South Ossetia
This was a few days before the main attack.


this has got nothing to do with the actual war yet. such skirmishes happened often in the last couple of years at the South Ossetian-Georgian border, and didnt lead to anything major.


Russians accused of 'bombing' Georgia as violence escalates
This one was coverage of Georgia's initial attack on Tskhinvali before the Russians counterattacked. Yes, it still has an anti-Russian spin to it, but it does make clear that Georgia attacked first and provides some background.


this deserves taking it apart. now lets see. first sentence:

As Georgian troops launched a major military offensive Friday to regain control over the breakaway province of South Ossetia, the former Soviet republic's president accused Russia of bombing its territory.


the interesting thing about this formulation is, it makes it impossible for the reader to tell who started it - it sounds as if Russia has been bombing Georgia (direct, outright lie), and THEN the Georgian president accused Russia AND started the offensive. its a clever way to formulate it so that the reader gets a false impression.


According to the Associated Press, Mikhail Saakashvili said in a televised statement that Russian aircraft bombed several Georgian villages and other civilian facilities.

He said there were injuries and damage to the buildings. "A full-scale aggression has been launched against Georgia," he said in a televised statement. "


two more quotes of the Georgian president, with ZERO factual proof (there couldnt be any - since it wasnt the case). and yet another statement that 1) A full-scale aggression is started against Georgia and 2) Georgia "responds" by attacking South Ossetia.


A Georgian official said seven people were hurt in the attack, AP reported.

Saakashvili urged Russia to immediately stop bombing Georgian territory. "Georgia will not yield its territory or renounce its freedom," he said.



two more Georgian quotes with zero proof.


Meanwhile, AP reported that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, speaking in televised remarks Friday during his trip to the opening of the Beijing Olympics, blamed Georgia for launching the effort to take control over South Ossetia and warned it would cause an unspecified retaliatory action.


this is the first part of this article which has any connection to reality.


The bombing charge came about an hour after Russia's ambassador to the United Nations brushed off a question about whether Russia would intervene militarily in a conflict between Georgia and its breakaway territory.

Violence in the former Soviet republic prompted an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council that lasted into Friday morning. The security council failed to issue a statement on the dramatic escalation of violence in a breakaway territory of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.


again, great propaganda formulation! this makes me want hit the guy who wrote it in the face. it basically completely turns the truth inside out. that emergency UN SC meeting was prompted not by "violence in the former Soviet republic", but by that very Russian UN ambassador Churkin, at 2 am at night, after Tskhinvali had been subjected to heavy Georgian artillery fire for 3 hours. his alleged "brushing off of a question" is after the SC failed to come to any resolution in the first meeting and it was adjourned. and the "bombing charge" is a complete, utter, falsification by Georgia. the first time that Russian warplanes actually entered South Ossetian - not even Georgian - airspace was much later, on the afternoon of the 8th, after Tskhinvali was already largely in ruins and there were many casualties among Russian peacekeepers.


Meanwhile, Georgia's president also announced that his government will be calling up reservists as fighting continued to rage in South Ossetia's capital.

makes Georgia look like a victim - needs to call up on reservists to cope with the mighty Russian Bear (tm).


Georgian forces launched fresh attacks into region late Thursday after a top government official said a unilateral cease-fire offer was met with artillery fire.

direct, outright, lie, in the meantime confirmed as a lie even by accounts of Western observers.

About 2,000 Georgian troops attempted to storm the breakaway territory's capital overnight and were regrouping south of the city, Tskhinvali, according to Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency.


"...according to a source that we dont trust, there are little green men on Mars".

anyhow, i dont want to comment the rest, its a waste of time, since its largely just direct quotes of Georgian "information" garbage.


as you can see, no, this article does not at all report the initial Georgian attack on Tskhinvali as the start of the war. and nobody read it that way, either, except for people who knew about it from other, better, sources.



Which is why the US has always committed troops to defend Israel. Oh wait, they haven't. You can claim what you want, but the facts say something else.

see above. it simply wasnt necessary yet since the Israeli AF are more of a subdivision of US AF and thus pretty good by themselves.


Yay for shifting goal posts! So it goes from most of the world is anti-American to most of the world doesn't like US policies?


isnt that the same? i mean yea, theres maybe also people who dont like McDonalds or Batman, or w/e else commonly associated with the US, but my random guess would be that about 99.9% of anti-American people are anti-American because they dont like US policies and people who represent those.


I don't think that excuse really works. This isn't a news story that got buried because something bigger happened.

its not an excuse. i actually did not know about that. it looked like a rather small event when i looked it up on wiki - about 20k-50k people involved on each side, or so.


Off hand I'd say the region of Pakistan where Bin Ladin is believed to be hiding.

uh-huh, right.. and what kind of target do you recommend exactly? and with what kind of nuke? also, um, last I heard bin Laden wasnt in Pakistan.. but I'm sure thats just a minor issue and wouldnt prevent you from dropping a nuke or two there.. just to see the pretty mushroom clouds :D


The US gets suprisingly little of its oil from the middle east actually. We get most of it from Canada and Mexico. If we lost middle eastern oil, we could make up the difference by fuel rationing and banning cars that get less than 35 MPG.


for now, that is. what you forgot is that both Canadian and Mexican - and even Venezoelan (although Chavez isnt very US-friendly lately..) oil would not last all that long if you subtracted the Middle East. the Middle East has far more oil than all of those combined.


That's a pretty bad anology. If you wanted to make it more accurate, it'd be, the bully kills the families of the kids that drop the pot on him.


thats not exactly accurate. you forget the fact that those people are essentially committed to die for their goals - and 19 of them did on 9/11. they have nothing to lose. so its not even possible to take any real revenge on them.


If you want to make it even more accurate you could change the bully to a big kid who means well


thats probably the #1 delusion of the average American regarding the US foreign policy. "Freedom and democracy for everybody is our nation's goal. We mean it well for everyone. etc."

that's a joke. it takes years of brainwash to believe in that. seen from a cold and objective outsider standpoint, the US foreign policy in the post-WWII time has been basically 1) increasing its geopolitical sphere of influence, by any means (including very dirty ones and killing millions of people in process) and 2) exploiting places it controlled to an appropriate extent (some places more than others). freedom? democracy? dont make me laugh. the US has supported and continues to support numerous tyrants who have taken any freedom away from their nations, and has continuously attacked and terrorized democracies and popular governments which did not comply with the US-prescribed course of action.


It changes a lot actually. Right now if the US can't find a good pretext, they simply won't invade.


what is a "good" pretext? that Saddam had nukes? that was a rotflmao joke to everyone who had a bit of understanding in the matter. they might've as well accused him of collaborating with evil space mutants from Alpha Centauri and aiming to enslave mankind. wouldve worked too - you could draw nice CG images of those to frighten the audience :D


It's a difference between the place getting bombed or not actually. They US hasn't bombed Iran for example, because it doesn't have a good pretext to go in. If they US no longer cares about that, what's to stop them?


sure there is a good pretext. Iran is harboring and financing terrorists and undermining peace and stability in the now-democratic-and-united Iraq. burn!!! i say. thats not even mentioning that they have BMs capable of reaching Israel, are secretly building a nuke, and have expressed a wish to eradicate Israel from the face of the Earth (quote Ahmadinejad).

what stops them is other, far more pragmatic issues. first, the US military is already stretched rather thin, with enormous costs and effort for the war in Iraq (and lesser ones - but still existent - for Afghanistan, which is btw why they're trying to push it off to the UN). also, Iran is a considerably more difficult terrain than Iraq, far more populated, and much more unified in terms of religious dogmatism. very high losses would be likely in case of any ground invasion. a couple of airstrikes are possible though, but it is clear that those, different from Serbia, would not be enough to tumble the government or do anything major at all. so the only real question is whether they'll perhaps do some airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear and related facilities. Israel has been pressuring for this for months, but didnt get US approval yet. but it may yet come, dont know. there is a certain chance it's still going to happen during the Bush term. less likely it will happen anytime soon in the Obama term.



So you're saying securing a vital resource that your economy depends on is not sensible? I did point out that it's if you ignore the human cost.

well, sensible for whom? for the US? sure its sensible. conquering the whole world would be even more sensible - you could make them all give up their money and resources. its just somewhat difficult, thats all :D


The US and Britain could not have invaded in 1941 or 1942. They were both still building up their forces.

thats a white lie you commonly read in Western history books. sure they could have. just think about it yourself - what exactly did they not have in 1942 that they had during D-Day in 1944?

the conclusion you should come to is - nothing meaningful. they just had more troops and more aviation in 1944, so they could perform the landing with somewhat smaller losses. had they really wanted it, it would have been possible in 1942 as well. it just wasnt necessary from their standpoint - a thesis Churchill had expressed was to let Hitler and Stalin "fight it out" and then intervene.


1943, maybe, as there was that invasion of Italy.

not just Italy - North Africa as well. an obvious question is: if they had forces to spend on the - rather unimportant - African area, why didnt they use them in Europe?


Also, if you remove the threat of an allied invasion of France, that frees up 59 German divisions to deploy against the Russians. Considering the Russian advance was already stretching their logistics to the limit, the transfer of nearly 60 divisions to the eastern front would have changed the situation dramaticly.


thats a common line from US/UK people. "had we not threatened with an invasion of France, Hitler would have pulled off the troops and beaten the Russians". another popular line is "had we not attacked Japan in 1941, Stalin would not have been able to pull of the Far Eastern divisions and Moscow would have fallen". what these lines neglect to mention is the sheer size of the Eastern front. it was - by far - the largest scene of any armed conflict in human history, with numerous 1 million+ armies on each side clashing together. the thought that a couple divisions could change the outcome.. is wishful thinking. the whole Western front was less than 1/4th of the Eastern front even at its peak times.



Germany most certainly couldn't "win", but without Normandy, the third reich may have been able to preserve itself.

by mid-1944? no. it was clear the Germans had been beaten - they were already back beyond Russia's border and pushed ever further back, the USSR's industrial production was already far beyond the German one - and included various new designs like the T-34 which were superior to most German analogues - and the Soviet command already featured a prominent row of very capable strategists like Zhukov and Rokossovsky which had made it to the top from below after the failures of other top level planners in the early stages of the war, and had repeatedly proven capable of beating the German strategists.


South Vietnam asked for US aid against North Vietnam. That the US installed the government was irrelevant.


says who?? say, I organize a special forces unit tomorrow, go snipe Bush and his whole administration, take control of the White House and the Pentagon, declare you the new President of the US, and demand aid from, say, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela? would that be irrelevant?


For starters, the Government in South Vietnam had effective control of the country.

no it didnt. the extremely massive US bombing of South Vietnam and the invasion were necessary exactly BECAUSE it had no control of the country.


Your Germany example though, the Germans were not invited in by any official government. They went in, then forced the government there to accept the annexation of the Sudetenland. It's completely different from either the US war in Vietnam, or the Soviet war in Afganistan, as neither nation claimed that territory as their own.



the Nazis were just more blunt about it, thats all. the principle was the same. in France for example they installed the Nazi-friendly Vichy government. does it make their invasion of France "ok"?


You'll note that the US bombers did not drop incindary bombs in those raids, but high explosive, and concentraited their attacks on industrial targets in the city. For the US, there was nothing special about the operation.


Kurt Vonnegut - who was there - thinks otherwise. if you havent read Slaughterhouse #5 i recommend it. certainly a unique book.


You know, it almost sounds like you're saying it's in the interests of European countries to have such relations with the US, for now at least. I would point out that the trade partner thing does work both ways.


its obviously in the interest of EU countries to have friendly trade relations with the US - but not to be subservient to it. for the US though, its obviously in its interest to have vassals instead of equivalent partners. so thats a bit of a conflict.


If you're only talking about high end cars, yeah you'd have a case. I'm talking about low to mid-end cars, the kind most of the people who have a car actually own. Think ford focus, honda civic, those kinds. I'd agree that the US auto industry most certainly does have a lack of high end sports cars, but when it comes to more common cars, US offerings are much better than their reputation would suggest.


well, all that is valid only if price is an issue. i'd say that, by and large, German cars are the best ones in nearly all segments if you dont look at the price (except maybe the super cheap segment where there's simply no German cars). if you take a supersport - Porsche 911 Turbo (this will probably be my next car) or Carrera GT. if you take a regular sports car, its hard to get anything better overall than a Porsche 911 (although the Nissan GT-R is a very strong competitor). if you take a large family sedan, BMW 5 series or Audi A6. SUV - Porsche Cayenne Turbo. Grand Tourer - BMW M6. smaller sedan - BMW 3 series or Audi A4. luxury executive class car - Mercedes S-class, 7 series BMW, Maybach.etc.


As for interepting Russian warheads, assume an 80% success rate for interception. Now assume 2000 as the number of russian warheads. We have what, 10 that will be stationed in Poland? That leaves 1992 warheads unintercepted, ignoring that a Russian strike on the US would not pass over europe. So let's say the US wanted to stop a Russian strike. At 80% success rate the US would need a minimum of 2500 ABMs.

that is correct for a Russian first-strike scenario. in that case, obviously, no US ABM would be enough, in any foreseeable future. the talk is not about that, however. it is about a US first-strike scenario with a subsequent Russian counterstrike. in a 2006 paper published in the Foreign Affairs Journal, two US politology professors called Lieber and Press argue that the US could, in the meantime, take out ALL of Russia's ICBM strike capabilities with a first strike (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85204/keir-a-lieber-daryl-g-press/the-rise-of-u-s-nuclear-primacy.html ). And that article is not even all that unrealistic - apart from a couple technical errors and omissions like the treatment of mobile ICBMs. Taking that into account, the ABM systems can be seen in a whole new light. After a US first strike, they may have to intercept not 1000 missiles (you were counting warheads there, MIRV types have up to 16 warheads per missile), but merely 10 or 20. And in such a case, the Poland-based ABM defense gets a whole new critical importance.


If the Russians then build more missiles, the US then needs to build even more ABMs. It's a losing game cost wise. No matter how good the system, you'll always need massive redundancy, and that's assuming an unrealisticly high success rate. Further it takes a much more advanced guidence package to hit another missile than it does for that first one to hit a city.

all that is correct. indeed the reality today is that it is far easier and cheaper to deliver a nuclear BM somewhere than to intercept it even somewhat reliably. more than that - interception is largely impossible with contemporary technology for the newer Russian BMs with 10+ MIRVs, changing trajectories, and 100+ false targets. which is exactly why this Poland-based ABM system is ONLY a first-strike weapon, designed to intercept a few remaining missiles in the acceleration phase.


Which is all speculation.

absolutely not. it's almost all NOT speculation, but cold hard facts (which you perhaps have not yet heard of since they were at best scarcely reported in Western media so far - there seems to be a tide change in progress though starting 5 days ago with that NY Times article, since then Business Week, Times, FT, and some others have picked it up too).

the only speculation you'll find in my article is section 4 - motives. those are unknown to anyone with certainty even today, except maybe the Georgian leadership and their immediate allies. it's possible to make educated guesses though, and I think my guesses are as good as anyone else's. at least i've not seen anything better so far.


A base that can easily saturate the ABMs. There simply aren't enough.

only in a Russian first-strike case, see above.


In a scenerio where a first strike is a possibility, both sides would have their missiles on standby. Most likely the Russians owuld be able to launch before their silos were hit, and vice-versa.

not necessarily. first-strike scenarios are mostly treated conservatively - i.e. as in how many ICBMs can still be launched after all of the enemy's ICBMs have detonated.


Then there are ballistic missile subs. They'd be insufficient to cover a retalitory strike as well.

yes.. but, if you read Lieber and Press above, they remark correctly that in practice, Russian nuclear subs rarely patrol and are mostly simply in their home ports in Petropavlovsk etc. which are of course all very well known to the US. the situation would change somewhat if Russia allocated more money to the strategic sub division and made them patrol more, and especially after the completion of the new series of strategic Borei class nuclear subs currently in production.


One slight problem there. By the time they could cover the range, the Russian missile would be out of it's initial boost phase. The only way for it to work is if the ABMs were launched first.

no. the trick is that the ABM missiles have a much better thrust-weight ratio and are able to accelerate much faster. to intercept ICBMs launched from the Kozelsk base, it would be sufficient to launch the Poland-based interceptor missiles with about 25-40 seconds delay (quoted off a Russian military forum). this is plenty of time for a missile base, especially in a US first-strike scenario where the ABM bases would already be on alert anyway.


The thing you have to remember about the US ABMs, they don't work. They have about a 50% success rate, against targets of known trajectory. Against actual enemy missiles, they'd be lucky to have a 25% success rate.


well, yes. I'm also quite sceptical regarding any ABM defense. with contemporary BMs... it probably doesnt work at all. but in theory, it *might* work. and that, in practice, is argument enough to exert political pressure.


To anyone informed about the actual capabilities of the missiles, it's clear they'd be useless as a first strike backup. Oh I fully agree that part of their purpose is to apply political presure on Russia, however, I disagree that they're an effective means of doing so.

well, to be honest, I also think the same. but - two renowned US university professors published in the #1 foreign policy journal beg to differ - see above. and obviously thats enough for the regular politicians with minimal technical knowledge to be concerned about.


The problem there, Americans don't want to see things that would make it look like they're supporting the wrong side. They'd change the channel to another media outlet who report on the "ebil ruskies", and thus lose ratings.

who said the US has to support Georgia?


That's because that's what gets them the ratings. The ratings then determine how much they can charge for ads. The US media companies only care about that ad money. Thus they'll show whatever gets them the higher ratings needed for higher ad revenue. It just so happens that's a US centric view of the world. That's what Americans want to see. Though I think we largely agree here, only differing on how much an influence one part of the equation is. I say getting the higher ratings is more important than the adgenda of the sponsers, you say the adgenda of the sponsers has the bigger impact. I think we can agree that both play a factor though.

well, read Manufacturing Consent. I really recommend it. it's mostly about old news, like Vietnam, Latin America, etc, but its super instructive in how the US media self-censorship works.

[Kamui4356]

in the Nicaragua case it was called "unlawful use of force" in World Court legal terms. in reality that equals instigating and financing the killing, torturing, etc of many thousands of people. in the Vietnam case its much more clear altogether - there it was just outright genocide against the South Vietnamese population.

Which once again is not the same as carrying out the attacks yourself.




thats very naive. the CIA obviously doesnt care at all what methods the various militant groups it supports use. there's a myriad examples for that. the most prominent one is simply bin Laden himself - a former CIA ally. another prominent former ally was Somoza. another was Suharto. etc etc.

I'm saying that's how it should be, [B]not[b] how it is. The Us would likely have a lot fewer enemies in the world if it were the case.



a demonstration of a nuclear bomb effect on a military target would have been in all likelihood sufficient. yet Truman &co discarded this in favor of a greater horror effect (and, not to neglect, making a larger impression on Stalin).

I'd disagree there. Without the effect of the atomic bombs, and Russia invading, Japan would not have surrendered until the Allies at the very least established a beachhead. At this point of the war Japan was looking for a decisive victory to use to get better terms. With the forces Japan had left in the home islands, they did have a very realistic chance of repulsing the first allied invasion. They would not have surrendered until that played out.



well, first of all, the US troops never even got to Berlin. it was deep within Soviet-occupied territory, and the Allied zones of Berlin were given to them as a kind of token recognition by Stalin.

also, at that point they couldnt really afford it. the Soviet army in Europe was far stronger than the US-UK forces at the time, and nuclear bombs were not (yet) readily available - although available to the US in a longer term. Still, Truman's quote was "It is too risky to engage in this [a suggested armed convoy to West Berlin] due to the consequence of war."

Yet you said that the US has been looking to start WWIII ever since WWII ended. Perfect opportunity right there, yet the US chose a course less likely to cause war.

Also I never claimed the US pushed into Berin.




lol? your history is all wrong there. Cuba, for a change, was a case where the USSR had nothing to do with its revolution (in which another US proxy puppet tyrant was overthrown by a popular movement - Batista) and was actually indeed invited (even as much as begged) by Castro to install missiles there. the Kennedy administration actions though - that was insane. that was closest the world got to a WWIII so far. and for what? for the idea that a sovereign nation near the US cannot be allowed to get arms from another sovereign nation - which at the time, coincidentally, already had exactly such arms aimed at it at its border (in Turkey).

we all have to thank whatever gods we believe in that Kennedy himself didnt authorize the armed invasion of Cuba - which was strongly proposed by the US military lead. what they didnt know at the time was that the Soviet missile division in Cuba under Generals Pliev and Gribkov had already deployed short-range tactical Luna missiles with nuclear warheads aimed at Florida, and had a command to retaliate in case of a US invasion. that would've been the end for Florida, and for many other places as well.

When did I claim otherwise? Sorry, but I don't see how you can say I have my history wrong when I only mentioned the crisis itself as being a situation that could have easily lead to WWIII, not any details. The fact remains, you claimed the US has been seeking WWIII, yet the US passed up on yet another great opportunity there.

What the US is seeking isn't a war, but someone that it's not inconcievable they might someday have to fight. That helps justify the large military budget.

you can never say when a nuclear strike is "imminent". you can only declare a certain condition when you'll consider yourself free to perform one, and hope that the others are sane enough not to let it come to that.

Fair enough.


why so. it did in fact prove the opposite - even a (small) nation with fairly modern technology can be largely defeated and forced into a government change with (albeit very large) purely air superiority.

Only because of a threat of a ground war which put them in a no win situation. Serbia was able to preserve it's military force relatively intact by digging in and staying put.


Arab nations dont have any problems in obtaining modern warplanes as well. although in terms of training - yeah here they are historically not so good. but well, overwhelming quantity beats quality, even nowadays.

Israel has quantity as well though. Also, once again simply buying the planes isn't enough, you need the logistics to support them. This means not only fighters, but things like AWEC and tankers.


the US would send troops alright - if it were actually necessary. since 1948, it never was. normally, unless the Arab nations unite and attack, as in 1973, Israel dominates everything around it because it has a very modern, well-equipped, well-trained, and dedicated army. even in 1973, although that was more of a draw result, Israel was merely taken by surprise and did manage to turn the Arab advantage into nothing within a few days (albeit with substantial losses) - youve read the Kissinger quote above.

I disagree there. The US would not send ground troops. Maybe give air support, but even that's pushing it. Most likely US aid would be in the form of lots of free weapons.

regarding F-22s, they arent for export at the moment, but it's clear that Israel will get them first ultimately (in a few years when they get older probably).

I know that quite well. Though if Israel was in trouble that might change. As it stands now, Israel will not get F-22s until they're functionally obsolete. In one of the rare examples of the US actually punishing Israel for doing something, they've been put to the back of the list for F-35s thanks to selling weapons technology to China. They'll still be getting them, if the F-35 isn't cancelled, but not as soon as they would have. F-22s on the other hand are likely out of the question unless something goes really wrong for Israel.




they reported jack. they may have mentioned it as an unconfirmed footnote, but it totally went under in a stream of panicky rhetoric a la "Russian bear bares its fangs", "Russian tanks roll into Georgia as cities burn" etc.

why do you think the mere fact that there are some official Western observers who were, in fact, there at the time of the Georgian attack, and who, in fact say that it was the Georgians who attacked first, is treated as a big surprise and revelation and deserves a cover page headline in the NY Times - 3 months later?

their reporting is a complete joke.

Simply, because although the facts were reported, they were quickly buried as the political pundits spun the story.




this has got nothing to do with the actual war yet. such skirmishes happened often in the last couple of years at the South Ossetian-Georgian border, and didnt lead to anything major.

That was less than a week before the actual war. It shows that cnn was at least covering the situation there


this deserves taking it apart. now lets see. first sentence:


the interesting thing about this formulation is, it makes it impossible for the reader to tell who started it - it sounds as if Russia has been bombing Georgia (direct, outright lie), and THEN the Georgian president accused Russia AND started the offensive. its a clever way to formulate it so that the reader gets a false impression.


two more quotes of the Georgian president, with ZERO factual proof (there couldnt be any - since it wasnt the case). and yet another statement that 1) A full-scale aggression is started against Georgia and 2) Georgia "responds" by attacking South Ossetia.


two more Georgian quotes with zero proof.


this is the first part of this article which has any connection to reality.


again, great propaganda formulation! this makes me want hit the guy who wrote it in the face. it basically completely turns the truth inside out. that emergency UN SC meeting was prompted not by "violence in the former Soviet republic", but by that very Russian UN ambassador Churkin, at 2 am at night, after Tskhinvali had been subjected to heavy Georgian artillery fire for 3 hours. his alleged "brushing off of a question" is after the SC failed to come to any resolution in the first meeting - largely because of US-UK influence - and it was adjourned. and the "bombing charge" is a complete, utter, falsification by Georgia. the first time that Russian warplanes actually entered South Ossetian - not even Georgian - airspace was much later, on the afternoon of the 8th, after Tskhinvali was already largely in ruins and there were many casualties among Russian peacekeepers.


makes Georgia look like a victim - needs to call up on reservists to cope with the mighty Russian Bear (tm).


direct, outright, lie, in the meantime confirmed as a lie even by accounts of Western observers.



"...according to a source that we dont trust, there are little green men on Mars".

anyhow, i dont want to comment the rest, its a waste of time, since its largely just direct quotes of Georgian "information" garbage.


as you can see, no, this article does not at all report the initial Georgian attack on Tskhinvali as the start of the war. and nobody read it that way, either, except for people who knew about it from other, better, sources.

Oh, I freely admitt the article has a heavy anti-Russian spin. However, I'm not sure how you can say it does not report that the Georgians fired first, when the whole damn thing is about Georgia whining that Russia was intervening in their war. Oh but of course you'll only pick and choose the parts that support your claim, and of course interpret the parts that could go either way to support a particular view.

"Georgia's ambassador to the United Nations, Irakli Alasania, said that "Russia has become a party to the conflict." He said Russia has supported separatists in South Ossetia, a charge Russia dismissed."

Now tell me how Russia could "become a party to the conflict" if Russia invaded Georgia first? That implies a conflict is ongoing, hense Georgia attacked first.

''Georgian troops pushed into South Ossetia after separatists attacked Georgian soil, destroying one village and killing several civilians, soldiers and police officers, Alasania said.

Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, denied allegations that his country planned to intervene militarily. In comments to the Security Council, he decried the "blatant aggressive action of Georgia." "

So here we have Georgia having already attacked, but no Russian invasion yet?How could Russia's ambassador deny plans to intervine militarily if Russia had already intervened?



see above. it simply wasnt necessary yet since the Israeli AF are more of a subdivision of US AF and thus pretty good by themselves.

While they may work with US planners, calling the Israeli military a sub division of the US military is greatly exaggerating the relationship.


isnt that the same? i mean yea, theres maybe also people who dont like McDonalds or Batman, or w/e else commonly associated with the US, but my random guess would be that about 99.9% of anti-American people are anti-American because they dont like US policies and people who represent those.

Hate is a much stronger term than don't like. You can dislike something without hating it. While they deal with the same concept, there is a rather big difference in degree. Saying you don't like something is not the same as saying you hate it.


its not an excuse. i really did not know about that. it looked like a rather small event when i looked it up on wiki - about 20k-50k people involved on each side, or so.

Fair enough, though that's kind of something that a quick google search before making the claim should have turned it up.




uh-huh, right.. and what kind of target do you recommend exactly? and with what kind of nuke? also, um, last I heard bin Laden wasnt in Pakistan.. but I'm sure thats just a minor issue and wouldnt prevent you from dropping a nuke or two there.. just to see the pretty mushroom clouds :D

Most reports I've heard indicate he's in Waziristan, the border region of Afganistan and Pakistan, though I've also heard some crazy theories like he's in Iran. It's entirely possible he's someplace else, but considering the terrain and that there's strong support for the Taliban in the region, it's a good bet he was thn until very recently at least. Though I've also heard reports that the Taliban has cut their ties with Bin Ladin, so in that case he would have likely left.



for now, that is. what you forgot is that both Canadian and Mexican - and even Venezoelan (although Chavez isnt very US-friendly lately..) oil would not last all that long if you subtracted the Middle East. the Middle East has far more oil than all of those combined.

Oil's on the way out regardless. There's only so much financially viable oil to extract, and even optimistic estimates give it 50 years.



thats not exactly accurate. you forget the fact that those people are essentially committed to die for their goals - and 19 of them did on 9/11. they have nothing to lose. so its not even possible to take any real revenge on them.

True enough for the lower levels. The leadership on the other hand doesn't seem so eager to die for their cause.



thats probably the #1 delusion of the average American regarding the US foreign policy. "Freedom and democracy for everybody is our nation's goal. We mean it well for everyone. etc."

that's a joke. it takes years of brainwash to believe in that. seen from a cold and objective outsider standpoint, the US foreign policy in the post-WWII time has been nothing more than 1) increasing its geopolitical sphere of influence, by any means (including very dirty ones and killing millions of people in process) and 2) exploiting places it controlled to an appropriate extent (some places more than others). freedom? democracy? dont make me laugh. the US has supported and continues to support numerous tyrants who have taken any freedom away from their nations, and has continuously attacked and terrorized democracies which did not comply with the US-prescribed course of action.

If that was the actual policy of the US, I doubt things would be much better though. Instead of setting up puppet dictatorships, we'd set up puppet democracies, and that would be the end of it. Personally I think the US should partily return to isolationism. Not completely of course, but stop intervening in all these random nations. Just meet our treaty obligations and keep the navy patroling shipping lanes. Anything else, let someone else worry about for a change.


what is a "good" pretext? that Saddam had nukes capable of hitting the US? that was a rotflmao joke to everyone who had a bit of understanding in the matter. they might've as well accused him of collaborating with evil space mutants from Alpha Centauri and aiming to enslave mankind. wouldve worked too - you could draw nice CG images of those to frighten the audience :D

That was more to get public support. The legal framework for the invasion centered around Iraq's violations of the UN resolutions. It was shakey, but a good lawyer could make a case there. With Iran, there wouldn't even be that.



sure there is a good pretext. Iran is harboring and financing terrorists and undermining peace and stability in the now-democratic-and-united Iraq. burn!!! i say. thats not even mentioning that they have BMs capable of reaching Israel, are secretly building a nuke, and have expressed a wish to eradicate Israel from the face of the Earth (quote Ahmadinejad).

One little problem there, the US public largely isn't buying that. After a nuclear attack by terrorists, the American public won't care, they'd simply want someone to pay.

what stops them is other, far more pragmatic issues. first, the US military is already stretched rather thin, with enormous costs and effort for the war in Iraq (and lesser ones - but still existent - for Afghanistan, which is btw why they're trying to push it off to the UN). also, Iran is a considerably more difficult terrain than Iraq, far more populated, and much more unified in terms of religious dogmatism. very high losses would be likely in case of any ground invasion. a couple of airstrikes are possible though, but it is clear that those, different from Serbia, would not be enough to tumble the government or do anything major at all. so the only real question is whether they'll perhaps do some airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear and related facilities. Israel has been pressuring for this for months, but didnt get US approval yet. but it may yet come, dont know. there is a certain chance it's still going to happen during the Bush term. less likely it will happen anytime soon in the Obama term.

Fair enough. I'd also add that Iraq showed that even if you overthrow an unpopular and oppressive regime, it doesn't mean the people will like you telling them what to do, and Iran's regime isn't quite as bad as saddam's. Hell, if we'd lift the embargo and improve relations, odds are the Iranian people would eventually vote in people who'd reform the country.




well, sensible for whom? for the US? sure its sensible. conquering the whole world would be even more sensible - you could make them all give up their money and resources. its just somewhat difficult, thats all :D

Too much trouble. Really the oil is too, but it's like a drug. :heh:



thats a white lie you commonly read in Western history books. sure they could have. just think about it yourself - what exactly did they not have in 1942 that they had during D-Day in 1944?

The big L word, Logistics. There simply wasn't a way to get a large army on shore in the face of a strong german defense, and keep it supplied. Look at the trouble Operation Torch had in North Africa with a relatively unopposed landing. Now add in several german divisions trying to throw the invastion back into the sea and you have a recipe for disaster.

the conclusion you should come to is - nothing meaningful. they just had more troops and more aviation in 1944, so they could perform the landing with somewhat smaller losses. had they really wanted it, it would have been possible in 1942 as well. it just wasnt necessary from their standpoint - a thesis Churchill had expressed was to let Hitler and Stalin "fight it out" and then intervene.
Maybe late 1942, but that would be pushing it. Mid 1943 would be the soonest they could do it with a good chance of success. The best they could do prior to that would be to secure a beach head. They wouldn't have been able to push inland. Once again, you can't simply put an army in the field and tell it to fight without giving it the logistical support it needs. That support simply wasn't there yet. Doing so only results in losing that army.



not just Italy - North Africa as well. an obvious question is: if they had forces to spend on the - rather unimportant - African area, why didnt they use them in Europe?

Look at the forces deployed in North Afrcia and the forces Germany had in France. There simply weren't enough troops and not enough of a logistical base to support them at that point.


thats a common line from US/UK people. "had we not threatened with an invasion of France, Hitler would have pulled off the troops and beaten the Russians". another popular line is "had we not attacked Japan in 1941, Stalin would not have been able to pull of the Far Eastern divisions and Moscow would have fallen". what these lines neglect to mention is the sheer size of the Eastern front. it was - by far - the largest scene of any armed conflict in human history, with numerous 1 million+ armies on each side clashing together. the thought that a couple divisions could change the outcome.. is wishful thinking. the whole Western front was less than 1/4th of the Eastern front even at its peak times.

Oh? When did I say beaten the Russians? I believe I said halted the Russian advance. Stopping the Russian drive is not winning, it's stopping the Russian drive. The Russians can very easily regroup and try again after they licked their wounds, but the Germans wouldn't be able to. also]59 divisions is more than a couple. It's increasing the German force in the east by about a third. Even the 20 would increase the German force in the east by about 10%. That's more than enough to have an impact on the course of the fighting.

Yes, 20 divisions could have at least slowed them and made the advance far more costly, as the Russian drive was already pushing the limits of it's logistics. 59 fresh divisions would likely have been enough to halt the Russian drive, forcing them to at least regroup extending the war by up to a year. In either situation, combined with no western front opening, it isn't impossible that Stalin could seek a seperate peace. That still doesn't save Germany though, The western allies would still be capable of winning. However, if Stalin already had made peace with Germany, they might just consider it not worth the effort and leave the third Reich in place in Germany itself, in exchange for giving up the occupied territory. Of course in that case there would have just been another war a few years later.


I have not heard that one about Japan before though.


by mid-1944? no. it was clear the Germans had been beaten - they were already back beyond Russia's border and pushed ever further back, the USSR's industrial production was already far beyond the German one - and included various new designs like the T-34 which were superior to most German analogues - and the Soviet command already featured a prominent row of very capable strategists like Zhukov and Rokossovsky which had made it to the top from below after the failures of other top level planners in the early stages of the war, and had repeatedly proven capable of beating the German strategists.

Which in no way rules out the possibility of halting the Russian advance with the additional forces. That does not give the Germans an automatic win, if the fighting continues they'd still lose, but it does give them a bargining chip to maybe end the war still in power in Germany. Once D-Day occurs, that's no longer possible though, as the chance for to make a seperate peace with each side is gone.



says who?? say, I organize a special forces unit tomorrow, go snipe Bush and his whole administration, take control of the White Hous and the Pentagon, declare you the new President of the US, and demand aid from, say, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela? would that be irrelevant?

No, but if you did it several years before, and I've succeeded in securing control of the country, then ask for help because of a foriegn invasion I'm trying to put down, the request becomes a bit more legitimate.


no it didnt. the extremely massive US bombing of South Vietnam and the invasion were necessary exactly BECAUSE it had had no control of the country.

Yet it managed to hang on from 1955 until 1963, with a few US troops in an advisary role. Of course then there was a coup launched with the blessing of the US, and things escalated from there.


the Nazis were just more blunt about it, thats all. principle was the same. in France for example they installed the Nazi-friendly Vichy government. does it make their invasion of France "ok"?

You're talking about an invasion that installed a government though. This is a case of a previously established government later asking for aid.



Kurt Vonnegut thinks otherwise - if you havent read Slaughterhouse #5 i recommend it. certainly a unique book.

Perhaps, but that doesn't change the easily researched fact that it was the British that dropped the incindaries. Stick to blaming the US for the stuff it actually did.



its obviously in the interest of EU countries to have friendly trade relations with the US - but not to be subservient to it. for the US though, its obviously in its interest to have vassals instead of equivalent partners. so thats a bit of a conflict.

Fair enough.


well, all that is valid only if price is an issue. i'd say that, by and large, German cars are the best ones in nearly all segments if you dont look at the price (except maybe the super cheap segment where there's simply no German cars). if you take a supersport - Porsche 911 Turbo (this will probably be my next car) or Carrera GT. if you take a regular sports car, its hard to get anything better overall than a Porsche 911 (although the Nissan GT-R is a very strong competitor). if you take a large family sedan, BMW 5 series or Audi A6. SUV - Porsche Cayenne Turbo. Grand Tourer - BMW M6. smaller sedan - BMW 3 series or Audi A4. luxury executive class car - Mercedes S-class, 7 series BMW, Maybach.etc.

Like I said, I'm not talking about high end cars here, I'm talking about the cars most people drive.




that is correct for a Russian first-strike scenario. in that case, obviously, no US ABM would be enough, in any foreseeable future. the talk is not about that, however. it is about a US first-strike scenario with a subsequent Russian counterstrike. in a 2006 paper published in the Foreign Affairs Journal, two US politology professors called Lieber and Press argue that the US could, in the meantime, take out ALL of Russia's ICBM strike capabilities with a first strike (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85204/keir-a-lieber-daryl-g-press/the-rise-of-u-s-nuclear-primacy.html ). And that article is not even all that unrealistic - apart from a couple technical errors and omissions like the treatment of mobile ICBMs. Taking that into account, the ABM systems can be seen in a whole new light. After a US first strike, they may have to intercept not 1000 missiles (you were counting warheads there, MIRV types have up to 16 warheads per missile), but merely 10 or 20. And in such a case, the Poland-based ABM defense gets a whole new critical importance.

If, and it's a big if, the US could catch the Russians totally unaware, it might be possible to take out a signifigant chunk of Russia's fixed ICBM assists. However, you yourself pointed out that it does not acocunt for mobile launchers, let alone SLBMs Most likely if relations have deterrioriated to the point a first strike is possible, it means the Russians would have at least a portion of their missiles on alert and launch before the US missiles hit.




all that is correct. indeed the reality today is that it is far easier and cheaper to deliver a nuclear BM somewhere than to intercept it even somewhat reliably. more than that - interception is largely impossible with contemporary technology for the newer Russian BMs with 10+ MIRVs, changing trajectories, and 100+ false targets. which is exactly why this Poland-based ABM system is ONLY a first-strike weapon, designed to intercept a few remaining missiles in the acceleration phase.

It's a useless system, that's in violation of a treaty if it did happen to work, which was produced only because the companies responsible for it's production had a general and some congressmen in their pocket who were able to convince the president it's a vital system. Maybe if 1 missile survived, it would have a chance to intercept it, but even assuming equal numbers, something's going to get through.




absolutely not. it's almost all NOT speculation, but cold hard facts (which you perhaps have not yet heard of since they were at best scarcely reported in Western media so far - there seems to be a tide change in progress though starting 5 days ago with that NY Times article, since then Business Week, Times, FT, and some others have picked it up too).

the only speculation you'll find in my article is section 4 - motives. those are unknown to anyone with certainty even today, except maybe the Georgian leadership and their immediate allies. it's possible to make educated guesses though, and I think my guesses are as good as anyone else's. at least i've not seen anything better so far.

Yet what we were talking about goes directly to motives. Wanting to go in isn't enough. They had to also think they could get away with it. Georgia thought Russia was bluffing and that they'd have more support from the US. If they thought Russia would counterattack like that, they would have had to be mad to launch the invasion after all.




only in a Russian first-strike case, see above.
Addressed above.




not necessarily. first-strike scenarios are mostly treated conservatively - i.e. as in how many ICBMs can still be launched after all of the enemy's ICBMs have detonated.

Let's assume 10% survive. That's still 200 left. Assuming 16 warheads per missile on average, that gives 13 missiles remaining. (doesn't work out evenly, so assume the actual number is a bit higher than 200) Assuming 100% success rate, that's still 3 that get through, loaded with warheads. Assuming a more realistic 30% success rate, that's 10 that get through, with 160 warheads raining death on the US. And that's likely a wildly over optimistic scenerio.


yes.. but, if you read Lieber and Press above, they remark correctly that in practice, Russian nuclear subs rarely patrol and are mostly simply in their home ports in Petropavlovsk etc. which are of course all very well known to the US. the situation would change somewhat if Russia allocated more money to the strategic sub division and made them patrol more, and especially after the completion of the new series of strategic Borei class nuclear subs currently in production.

Wishful thinking that assumes an attack out of the blue. If we look at a political situation where such an attack in an option, it's almost certain there will be subs out at sea. I suppose one could argue that it's possible for US attack subs to take them all out befor they can launch, but that isn't very likely.




actually, no. the trick is that the ABM missiles have a much better thrust-weight ratio and are able to accelerate much faster. to intercept ICBMs launched from the Kozelsk base, it would be sufficient to launch the Poland-based interceptor missiles with about 25-40 seconds delay (quoted off a Russian military forum). this is plenty of time for a missile base, especially in a US first-strike scenario where the ABM bases would already be on alert anyway.

They still have to cover a lot of ground though. Odds are at least some of the missiles that could have been intercepted will be out of the acceleration phase.




well, yes. I'm also quite sceptical regarding any ABM defense. with contemporary BMs... it probably doesnt work at all. but in theory, it *might* work. and that, in practice, is argument enough to exert political pressure.

True enough.



well, to be honest, I also think the same. but - two renowned US university professors published in the #1 foreign policy journal beg to differ - see above. and obviously thats enough for the regular politicians with minimal technical knowledge to be concerned about.

They're assuming a perfect scenerio where Russia is totally unprepared and nothing goes wrong though. That's not going to be the case in the real world. Of course that such a puplication exists means there will be people who buy into it, whcih is a very dangeous situation.




who said the US has to support Georgia?

No one, but they did.



well, read Manufacturing Consent. I really recommend it. it's mostly about old news, like Vietnam, Latin America, etc, but its super instructive in how the US media self-censorship works.

Maybe I'll check it out at some point.

[Aoie_Emesai]

Part of the danger of giving nuclear power to other countries is not necessarily the countries themselves, but the terrorists within those countries.

I think this is the main issue. Can they hold these uranium in such a way to not allow terrorist to obtain them. If we can solve this or somehow rationalize this, such needless issues can be solved and this case can actually get somewhere.

ps: god... thats one long post kamui...

[Ledgem]

I think this is the main issue. Can they hold these uranium in such a way to not allow terrorist to obtain them. If we can solve this or somehow rationalize this, such needless issues can be solved and this case can actually get somewhere.
Realistically speaking, will a terrorist have the sophostication and resources necessary to actually do something with it?

We always hear about how a terrorist might get control of these things as though it's a valid concern, but I'm skeptical. I'm not a physicist so I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure it isn't as easy as uranium + webpage on how to make a bomb = nuclear bomb. We often hear about fears of bioterrorism, which is something I think would be much easier to make a reality, but when is the last time you heard of a successful bioterrorist attack? Occasionally you hear about how anthrax is mailed to people, but that's pretty rare, half the time it seems to be a hoax, and the other half the time it isn't from a "traditional terrorist" but from some scientist who cracked.

Which isn't to say that it will never happen, but in reality the chances seem to be pretty slim. Are we to cut back progress and development simply because there's a chance that something bad might happen?

[Aoie_Emesai]

Realistically speaking, will a terrorist have the sophostication and resources necessary to actually do something with it?

We always hear about how a terrorist might get control of these things as though it's a valid concern, but I'm skeptical. I'm not a physicist so I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure it isn't as easy as uranium + webpage on how to make a bomb = nuclear bomb. We often hear about fears of bioterrorism, which is something I think would be much easier to make a reality, but when is the last time you heard of a successful bioterrorist attack? Occasionally you hear about how anthrax is mailed to people, but that's pretty rare, half the time it seems to be a hoax, and the other half the time it isn't from a "traditional terrorist" but from some scientist who cracked.

Which isn't to say that it will never happen, but in reality the chances seem to be pretty slim. Are we to cut back progress and development simply because there's a chance that something bad might happen?

I believe in the same as you. But when it matters, it's the national public who needs to feel safe that they aren't in much or dire danger.

...scrolling down takes me time >.< (lol ^^)

[Kamui4356]

..scrolling down takes me time >.< (lol ^^)

Sorry, I'll add spoiler tags to make them take up less room. :heh:

[Tri-ring]

I think this is the main issue. Can they hold these uranium in such a way to not allow terrorist to obtain them. If we can solve this or somehow rationalize this, such needless issues can be solved and this case can actually get somewhere.

ps: god... thats one long post kamui...

It's ALOT easier to make a "dirty"bomb than a thermo nuclear device and you don't even need weapon grade Uranium nor Plutonium to create a dirty bomb.
Just obtain high energy reactor waste, and a pestle to achieve maximum toxicity.
You don't even need to blow anything up, just pour it in to the water system and/or have the powder carried by wind.

Terroists somehow developing a termo nuclear bomb by obtaining raw ingredients is complete rubbish.

[Reckoner]

Terroists somehow developing a termo nuclear bomb by obtaining raw ingredients is complete rubbish.

Realistically speaking, will a terrorist have the sophostication and resources necessary to actually do something with it?

We always hear about how a terrorist might get control of these things as though it's a valid concern, but I'm skeptical. I'm not a physicist so I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure it isn't as easy as uranium + webpage on how to make a bomb = nuclear bomb. We often hear about fears of bioterrorism, which is something I think would be much easier to make a reality, but when is the last time you heard of a successful bioterrorist attack? Occasionally you hear about how anthrax is mailed to people, but that's pretty rare, half the time it seems to be a hoax, and the other half the time it isn't from a "traditional terrorist" but from some scientist who cracked.

Which isn't to say that it will never happen, but in reality the chances seem to be pretty slim. Are we to cut back progress and development simply because there's a chance that something bad might happen?

I don't think the concerns are rubbish, they hold some truth though they are often overplayed. Terrorists today may not hold the capabilities to launch one of these bombs, but who is to say that terrorists a couple decades later are not going to be capable? Are we going to fool around with opening the possibility even further?

Granted these countries cannot stay like this forever, but the countries like Iran and North Korea have not expressed that nuclear energy is their priority in bringing this technology to their countries, but rather the bomb. Unless you have nothing against them having the bomb, but I personally would like to keep any further countries from obtaining such weapons as long as possible. Though it may be inevitable that they manage to obtain such weapons, we can improve our technologies in defending against such attacks with more time perhaps.

[Aoie_Emesai]

It's ALOT easier to make a "dirty"bomb than a thermo nuclear device and you don't even need weapon grade Uranium nor Plutonium to create a dirty bomb.
Just obtain high energy reactor waste, and a pestle to achieve maximum toxicity.
You don't even need to blow anything up, just pour it in to the water system and/or have the powder carried by wind.

Terroists somehow developing a termo nuclear bomb by obtaining raw ingredients is complete rubbish.

Nuclear waste is just as dangerous as nuclear bombs, but no one thinks like that because you never hear the term "nuclear waste and terrorist coined together" it's always "terrorist" "bomb" "nuclear."

Those 3 words are always spat out in the same sentences together, so everyone is afraid. Keep the public in fear, they are doing good so far.

[yezhanquan]

Ah, nuclear waste. How do you dispose of the stuff? I don't know about you, but some landfill has to accept this stuff. Oh, and pray that it doesn't contaminate the groundwater.

[Mumitroll]

I'd disagree there. Without the effect of the atomic bombs, and Russia invading, Japan would not have surrendered until the Allies at the very least established a beachhead. At this point of the war Japan was looking for a decisive victory to use to get better terms. With the forces Japan had left in the home islands, they did have a very realistic chance of repulsing the first allied invasion. They would not have surrendered until that played out.


most informed people think otherwise. a 1946 US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded:

"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. "

or the opinion of a certain General Dwight D. Eisenhower:

"In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives."

a certain Albert Einstein - who is commonly regarded as a pretty bright person - was very much against it as well.

etc. basically the only people you'll find supporting it are pro-American rightwing historians.



Yet you said that the US has been looking to start WWIII ever since WWII ended. Perfect opportunity right there, yet the US chose a course less likely to cause war.

I did not mean that literally. obviously if the US *wanted* a WWIII, it would be way easy to start it anytime - just launch a couple ICBMs against targets in Russia and China. what I meant was that the US has been very aggressive in its foreign policy since WWII and has been the initiator in most of the confrontations between it and the USSR - including the most dangerous one, the Cuban missile crisis, and the most recent ones, the war in Georgia and the ABM systems in Poland.


When did I claim otherwise? Sorry, but I don't see how you can say I have my history wrong when I only mentioned the crisis itself as being a situation that could have easily lead to WWIII, not any details.


you wrote "USSR invaded Cuba". that's simply wrong.


What the US is seeking isn't a war, but someone that it's not inconcievable they might someday have to fight. That helps justify the large military budget.

no it doesnt. the US military budget is FAR greater than necessary for defense against a WWIII - and a major share of it goes into things which are practically unrelated to defense, like aircraft carriers and a stealth air superiority plane (F-22). the budget is mainly necessary for two completely different reasons which have nothing to do with defense: 1) having a mobile and strong military capable of controlling and subduing places to US interests worldwide by force and 2) keeping the military-industrial complex afloat.



Only because of a threat of a ground war which put them in a no win situation. Serbia was able to preserve it's military force relatively intact by digging in and staying put.


there was no threat of ground war. and no, basically Serbia was defeated rather clearly - simply by massive bombing of all kinds of targets, military and not. I read an account of a Serbian soldier operating a mobile radar - they said that within a few minutes of deploying and starting a scan, several HARM missiles were incoming.


Israel has quantity as well though. Also, once again simply buying the planes isn't enough, you need the logistics to support them. This means not only fighters, but things like AWEC and tankers.


AWACS you mean? thats not a must.. yes most modern airforces have coordination planes like that, but if fighters have good radars and/or are supported by a good ground radar system, they can do without.


I disagree there. The US would not send ground troops. Maybe give air support, but even that's pushing it. Most likely US aid would be in the form of lots of free weapons.


you'd see that you're wrong if Israel were actually under any real threat of being invaded.



Oh, I freely admitt the article has a heavy anti-Russian spin. However, I'm not sure how you can say it does not report that the Georgians fired first, when the whole damn thing is about Georgia whining that Russia was intervening in their war. Oh but of course you'll only pick and choose the parts that support your claim, and of course interpret the parts that could go either way to support a particular view.


listen, all you're trying to do is construe a way to interpret this heavily anti-Russian article - which does NOT clearly report who and what started the war - as giving some objective information. it isn't. and it would be very easy to find out. you could just ask 100 CNN readers who didnt know anything about the area before what happened. I did. I talked to lots of US/Western people in the first days of the war. almost EVERYBODY had the impression "Russia is attacking Georgia" from their media, even some intelligent people with academic degrees. brainwash ftw is all i can say.



"Georgia's ambassador to the United Nations, Irakli Alasania, said that "Russia has become a party to the conflict." He said Russia has supported separatists in South Ossetia, a charge Russia dismissed."

Now tell me how Russia could "become a party to the conflict" if Russia invaded Georgia first? That implies a conflict is ongoing, hense Georgia attacked first.

that implies nothing. the Georgian clashes with Ossetian "separatists" had been going on for years. what that Georgian means is that "Russia has invaded our territory to help the separatists". you dont seriously think he'd imply that Georgia had started the war, do you?



So here we have Georgia having already attacked, but no Russian invasion yet?How could Russia's ambassador deny plans to intervine militarily if Russia had already intervened?

simple - it's quoted "as is". i.e. "Russia's ambassador says X" - but thats not something that we trust. so if he says that Russia has no plans to intervene, we secretly suspect that it already has tanks rolling towards Tbilisi (because Georgian sources Y and Z say so). so we do 10 other articles along the lines of "Russian tanks rolling into Georgia as cities burn" (actual title from the Guardian).


While they may work with US planners, calling the Israeli military a sub division of the US military is greatly exaggerating the relationship.

lol, they have very modern US equipment - and are the first to receive it - run many joint exercises and planning operations, and closely cooperate in military research and development. no other country even comes close as far as I know.



Hate is a much stronger term than don't like. You can dislike something without hating it. While they deal with the same concept, there is a rather big difference in degree. Saying you don't like something is not the same as saying you hate it.


tis all word play. the general attitude is the same, its just the intensity that varies.



Most reports I've heard indicate he's in Waziristan, the border region of Afganistan and Pakistan, though I've also heard some crazy theories like he's in Iran. It's entirely possible he's someplace else, but considering the terrain and that there's strong support for the Taliban in the region, it's a good bet he was thn until very recently at least. Though I've also heard reports that the Taliban has cut their ties with Bin Ladin, so in that case he would have likely left.

well, to be honest, the very idea of trying to kill bin Laden by dropping a nuclear bomb on Pakistan is... um... kinda like trying to kill a fly somewhere in a big house with a guided missile. your odds of even approximately hitting are slim, and all you'll do is inflict lots of damage on unrelated people.



Oil's on the way out regardless. There's only so much financially viable oil to extract, and even optimistic estimates give it 50 years.

which is exactly why the major industrial nations' competition for the remaining oil resources is going to intensify in the near future. and why the US planning people want to control the location of 2nd largest - and most easily accessible - oil reserves already today.



If that was the actual policy of the US, I doubt things would be much better though. Instead of setting up puppet dictatorships, we'd set up puppet democracies, and that would be the end of it.


why so. a different, better way is also possible, and there are examples for that too. just not so many. but two prominent ones are post-WWII West Germany and Japan. in both, the US could have installed puppet regimes directly controlled by Washington, severely restricted their economy to a non-dangerous agricultural state (which was in fact done in the first years of post-war West Germany.. until they saw that millions of people would simply starve if they did not lift their 25% cap on production compared to pre-war levels). but the system they set up was largely democratic, and was given freedom to evolve. also, they ultimately famously provided major one-sided financial aid (the Marshall plan). in Japan, tehy were more severe, basically pushing lots of things down their throat - a new radically different constitution and legislative system, disarmament clauses, prohibiting any criticism of the Allies, strict press censorship, etc. a de-industrialization program similar to the one in West Germany was also run, but it was less strict and abandoned entirely after several years.

still, they ran free PM elections, and in 1949 gave almost full freedom to the new JP government.

however, in both places, all that freedom and aid had nothing to do with pure good will or any similar altruistic motives. West Germany had the crucial role of being the barrier against the USSR in Europe, and it was more useful in a strong and industrialized state than as a starving wasteland. a similar reason is valid for Japan - already in 1949 the Korean war, a direct confrontation with the USSR, made it important to build up Japan as an outpost against evil Communism in the Far East.

most other US-controlled places, since they did not have such major importance, did not end up so lucky, and were just exploited.



Personally I think the US should partily return to isolationism. Not completely of course, but stop intervening in all these random nations. Just meet our treaty obligations and keep the navy patroling shipping lanes. Anything else, let someone else worry about for a change.

the US foreign policy has nothing to do with "worrying". that's mere propaganda. that deaths of millions totally dont bother the US is easily illustrated by the fact that there are ongoing large-scale wars and mass genocide in Central Africa - yet the US just ignores that since there's simply nothing of interest in Central Africa. there's no oil and it's not a strategically important location. but when an evil Saddam Hussein oppresses the Kurds in Iraq (albeit with about 1/100th of the victims in Africa) - oh there we have to intervene. although when Turkey oppresses the same Kurds (at a much larger scale than Saddam by the way) - we help Turkey with weapons.

or when an evil Milosevic oppresses poor Albanians - even although they are a former minority in a Serbian province who are now a majority because of the demographic crisis, and their militarized wing KLA terrorizing Serbs living there in order to obtain independence as an Albanian province - oh then we must bomb him.


That was more to get public support. The legal framework for the invasion centered around Iraq's violations of the UN resolutions. It was shakey, but a good lawyer could make a case there.

thats wrong. there was no case. there was no legal framework. this invasion was completely illegal from the UN point of view. Saddam ultimately famously complied with all UN resolutions in a last-straw attempt to prevent an invasion. a few days later Bush announced that "diplomacy has failed". with the well-known result.




One little problem there, the US public largely isn't buying that.


what do you mean by not buying? those are all more or less quotes from US sources.



After a nuclear attack by terrorists, the American public won't care, they'd simply want someone to pay.

that much is obvious. but killing a few million completely unrelated Pakistanis for them "to pay"? thats.. insane.



Fair enough. I'd also add that Iraq showed that even if you overthrow an unpopular and oppressive regime, it doesn't mean the people will like you telling them what to do, and Iran's regime isn't quite as bad as saddam's. Hell, if we'd lift the embargo and improve relations, odds are the Iranian people would eventually vote in people who'd reform the country.


i think so too. in fact, some say that Ahmadinejad's very nationalist position only received so much support from the population at the 2005 election because of the US invasion of Iran.


The big L word, Logistics. There simply wasn't a way to get a large army on shore in the face of a strong german defense, and keep it supplied. Look at the trouble Operation Torch had in North Africa with a relatively unopposed landing. Now add in several german divisions trying to throw the invastion back into the sea and you have a recipe for disaster.


well, you know, all this logic reminds me of jokes against the French "surrendermonkey" mentality. like:

Q: How many gears does a French tank have?
A: 4 reverse and 1 forward, in case the enemy attacks from the rear.

the Russians had all kinds of logistics problems as well. for example supplying blockaded Leningrad for 900 days over the ice of the Ladoga lake was an immense logistic task - but it was ultimately done, and the city was defended - albeit with an extreme number of victims. in war, if you want to win, there is no such thing as "logistically cant do". if you dont want to win, and rather prefer to have others fight it out - then yeah you can find all kinds of excuses.



Maybe late 1942, but that would be pushing it. Mid 1943 would be the soonest they could do it with a good chance of success. The best they could do prior to that would be to secure a beach head. They wouldn't have been able to push inland. Once again, you can't simply put an army in the field and tell it to fight without giving it the logistical support it needs. That support simply wasn't there yet. Doing so only results in losing that army.


the end result of all that was that a few million more Russians died on the Eastern front, and most of Eastern Europe and half of Germany got Communist regimes installed for the next 50 years. to be honest, I think it would have been better if they had opened a second front in 1942, with whatever losses necessary. Europe would have been much better off in the long term.


I have not heard that one about Japan before though.

its a popular argument from Western historians who want to play up the Allied role. because of JP attacking Pearl Harbor and the US entering the war, it became possible for Stalin to pull off some Far Eastern troops which had been kept there as a guard against a potential second front by Japanese continental forces in China, and use them in the Winter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moscow - which was ultimately won - as the first successful Soviet operation against the Wehrmacht.


No, but if you did it several years before, and I've succeeded in securing control of the country, then ask for help because of a foriegn invasion I'm trying to put down, the request becomes a bit more legitimate.

I dont think thats legitimate at all. a regime installed by a military coup, oppressing the vast majority of the population, is never legitimate. and of course not "several years" later. for example, the Soviet regime was actually never legitimate. it was never elected by the Russian population. it came in power in the Bolshevik coup of 1917, and stayed till 1991. that doesnt make it any more legitimate!



You're talking about an invasion that installed a government though. This is a case of a previously established government later asking for aid.

its not very different. assume the Nazis would have sent in a special forces unit to France like, 6 months - or 2 years - prior to invading, and would have overthrown the government from within. would that make it any more legitimate?



Perhaps, but that doesn't change the easily researched fact that it was the British that dropped the incindaries. Stick to blaming the US for the stuff it actually did.


okay, so I'll blame the US for the "bombing" part of "firebombing Dresden", not the "fire" part. that ok? lol...




If, and it's a big if, the US could catch the Russians totally unaware, it might be possible to take out a signifigant chunk of Russia's fixed ICBM assists. However, you yourself pointed out that it does not acocunt for mobile launchers, let alone SLBMs Most likely if relations have deterrioriated to the point a first strike is possible, it means the Russians would have at least a portion of their missiles on alert and launch before the US missiles hit.


yes, i think similarly. but, as you can see, some pretty respected US experts think otherwise. I think thats reason enough to be worried.




Yet what we were talking about goes directly to motives. Wanting to go in isn't enough. They had to also think they could get away with it. Georgia thought Russia was bluffing and that they'd have more support from the US. If they thought Russia would counterattack like that, they would have had to be mad to launch the invasion after all.

this may surprise you, but they actually had a realistic chance to get away with it. i didnt know it at the time when i was writing the article, but there is only one major road connection from North to South Ossetia (there's a mountain chain between them) which is operable in winter - the Rok tunnel. had it been destroyed (for example with a Georgian special forces unit placing explosives there - there were some unconfirmed news on the 8th that this had been attempted but failed), there would be no easy way for Russia to send ground forces to South Ossetia for weeks or even months. and the peacekeeper batallion stationed there was merely about 500 people with light weapons and no armor. they would not be able to defend against the Georgian army. of course, airstrikes could still be made, but it would certainly be possible for the Georgians to occupy all of South Ossetia and either expel the civilian population, or install a proxy government and more or less use the Ossetians as a hostage against Russian airstrikes. that would have been pretty much a victory for Georgia, for reasons I have listed in section 4.



Let's assume 10% survive. That's still 200 left. Assuming 16 warheads per missile on average, that gives 13 missiles remaining. (doesn't work out evenly, so assume the actual number is a bit higher than 200) Assuming 100% success rate, that's still 3 that get through, loaded with warheads. Assuming a more realistic 30% success rate, that's 10 that get through, with 160 warheads raining death on the US. And that's likely a wildly over optimistic scenerio.


well, its all more or less guesswork, but i also tend to think that the risk of a US first strike even with taking into account all the recent events, would be pretty much incalculable. nobody in the US might die - or 50 millions might die. the military people think differently though. for them the "maybe" is not sufficient. what has kept the world somewhat stable in the Cold War was the so-called MAD principle - Mutual Assured Destruction. i.e. that no matter what kind of first strike one side did, the other would still be guaranteed to have enough ICBMs to destroy all major cities of the attacker. the problem is that recently the US is gnawing at the MAD principle - and as a result destabilizing the situation.



Of course that such a puplication exists means there will be people who buy into it, whcih is a very dangeous situation.

thats my point. and its not even a publication in say the NY Times or on Fox News. its a publication in Foreign Affairs - which is the #1 academic journal on international policy in the US.



No one, but they did.

well, does that US position represent your own opinion on that conflict?


Nuclear waste is just as dangerous as nuclear bombs

lol? nuclear waste is nowhere near as dangerous as nuclear bombs. if you seal it in a reasonably good container its harmless and you can leave it sitting for millenia. the only issue is that its expensive to make reasonably good containers, so that in practice people prefer to just dig big, deep, caves and dump the stuff there. which also mostly works - xcept for the cases when, as youve said, something leaks and radiation gets transported off by water.

[Aoie_Emesai]

Ah, nuclear waste. How do you dispose of the stuff? I don't know about you, but some landfill has to accept this stuff. Oh, and pray that it doesn't contaminate the groundwater.

No, I doubt any nation would allow nuclear waste to be just simply tossed into land fills. But for the United States, they are simply placing them underground, since other than waiting for the nuclear isotopes to degrade themselves, there aren't many other solutions.

[4Tran]

One of the issues that's likely to become only more pressing with time is that of who is allowed to possess nuclear technology. Sanctions are levied by the international community (most, if not all, of whom already possess nuclear technology) against other countries attempting to obtain nuclear technology, regardless of the reason that nuclear technology is desired.

The primary argument against nuclear proliferation is over the fear that nuclear technology will find its way into weapons. Nuclear weaponry is more destructive than conventional ballistic weaponry, and the potential destruction that could be caused is immense. In order to prevent nations deemed unstable or untrustworthy from acquiring nuclear technology, the international community imposes sanctions against those who seek it and attempts to lightly subsidize the needs of those who do not attempt to acquire it.
One of the underlying premises behind the Nonproliferation Treaty is that the reward for a country to not research nuclear weapons is that the nuclear powers will help them to develop nuclear technology for energy production. But the creaks and cracks in the treaty are apparent in the nuclear hotspots around the world.

This is an especially pressing problem since nuclear energy appears to be the only long-term energy alternative out there unless there are some radical changes in the way people live. It's probably going to be inevitable that much of the world will go in the direction of nuclear energy, so the best thing to do is to make it as safe and as sustainable as possible. There are lots of promising ideas in this field and the biggest obstacles are in terms of politics (both international and local).

It's ALOT easier to make a "dirty"bomb than a thermo nuclear device and you don't even need weapon grade Uranium nor Plutonium to create a dirty bomb.
Just obtain high energy reactor waste, and a pestle to achieve maximum toxicity.
You don't even need to blow anything up, just pour it in to the water system and/or have the powder carried by wind.

Terroists somehow developing a termo nuclear bomb by obtaining raw ingredients is complete rubbish.
Dirty bombs are also nowhere nearly as destructive as some sources would like to suggest. Most of the evidence would seem to indicate that it's not really any more dangerous than a regular fragmentation bomb.

Nuclear waste is just as dangerous as nuclear bombs, but no one thinks like that because you never hear the term "nuclear waste and terrorist coined together" it's always "terrorist" "bomb" "nuclear."
On the contrary, the toxicity of nuclear waste is vastly overblown. The most dangerous nuclear material has a very short half-life and it'd normally have to be ingested to be fatal. The less radioactive material is only lethal if one is under prolonged exposure to it. What gets people up in arms is the threat of a chronic exposure to relatively small amounts of radiation, but that's generally about the same level of threat as a chemical spill and the like.

Ah, nuclear waste. How do you dispose of the stuff? I don't know about you, but some landfill has to accept this stuff. Oh, and pray that it doesn't contaminate the groundwater.
The best way to deal with nuclear waste is to reprocess it. Reprocessing will not only reduce the total amount of waste but it can also generate the most amount of energy from the raw materials possible. Unfortunately, reprocessing technology can also create weapon-grade material so it's an extremely sensitive technology to give to non-nuclear powers.

And as Mumitroll pointed out, nuclear waste isn't anywhere nearly as difficult to dispose of as it's popularly depicted. The procedures that can take care of other (and usually much more volumous) toxic chemicals can deal with nuclear waste. It's just that the latter have much worse press.


While the discussion about Isreal and geopolitics and so forth is pretty interesting, I think that it's outside of the scope for this thread, which was to discuss the potentials and dangers of nuclear power, not nuclear weapons. I suggest that you take it to PMs or a different thread.

[ganbaru]

Dirty bombs are also nowhere nearly as destructive as some sources would like to suggest. Most of the evidence would seem to indicate that it's not really any more dangerous than a regular fragmentation bomb.
I would like tp know on what information you based yourself on this one.
I would agree than Dirty bomb on a battlefield is not that usefull, but on a civil area. it would have great impact , psychological at first, but let a little time and peoples will die.

[4Tran]

I would like tp know on what information you based yourself on this one.
I would agree than Dirty bomb on a battlefield is not that usefull, but on a civil area. it would have great impact , psychological at first, but let a little time and peoples will die.
There is very little literature out there that suggests that a dirty bomb is all that it's hyped up to be. SFGate has a good read up on the dangers one represents: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/18/ING427JIH21.DTL

An excerpt:
To understand the details, let's walk through the design of a dirty bomb similar to what Padilla wanted to build. I'll assume the same amount of radioactive material as was in Goiania: 1,400 curies of cesium-137. Radiation damage is measured in units called rem, and if you stand one meter from that source, you'll absorb 450 rems in less than an hour. That's called LD50, for lethal dose 50 percent. Untreated, you'll have a 50 percent chance of dying in the next few months from that exposure.

To try to enhance the damage, let's use explosives to spread our 1,400 curies over a larger area, say a neighborhood one kilometer square, or .6 of a mile. That will result in a radioactivity of 1.4 millicuries per square meter, and a careful calculation shows that residents will get a dose of 140 rems per year. But radiation illness is nonlinear. For extended exposures, the lethal dose increases by the fourth root of time, to approximately 1,250 rems for a one-year exposure and 2,500 rems for a 16-year exposure. So 140 rems per year is not enough to cause radiation illness, even if you stayed there 24/7 for a decade. Radioactive contamination may be the one case for which the solution to pollution really is dilution.
While such a weapon can kill a few people, it's not a particularly frightening threat.

[Shadow Kira01]

While such a weapon can kill a few people, it's not a particularly frightening threat.

True, but that depends on how much the government values the life of a citizen. Obviously, if the government considers their citizens as cannon fodder or expandables, then that's not even a threat to begin with. Otherwise, it is considerable threat.

[Tri-ring]

There is very little literature out there that suggests that a dirty bomb is all that it's hyped up to be. SFGate has a good read up on the dangers one represents: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/18/ING427JIH21.DTL


While such a weapon can kill a few people, it's not a particularly frightening threat.

Sorry but this article is dis-information since it really does not tell the true threat of a dirty bomb which is accumulation of high energy particles through digestion and respiration.
The article only talks of radiation poisoning through close proximity but if you enhale or digest even minute amount of high energy dust particles it will cause cancer and/or leukaemia.
The death toll numbering up will be slow but will be consistant for over a five+ year period.

[ganbaru]

And even if there little casuality, it the psychologic impact that is important.

[Tri-ring]

Coming up with plans to maximize the damage is mind boogling like dusting corn fields with high energy particles and wait for announcing the attack until AFTER harvesting and shipping.
When announced the whole harvest of that season will be deemed unusable subduing the entire American agricultrual industry to their knees.

[4Tran]

True, but that depends on how much the government values the life of a citizen. Obviously, if the government considers their citizens as cannon fodder or expandables, then that's not even a threat to begin with. Otherwise, it is considerable threat.
A dirty bomb is an exaggerated threat in the sense that the vast majority of casualties will be inflicted by the explosion rather than the radiation.

Sorry but this article is dis-information since it really does not tell the true threat of a dirty bomb which is accumulation of high energy particles through digestion and respiration.
The article only talks of radiation poisoning through close proximity but if you enhale or digest even minute amount of high energy dust particles it will cause cancer and/or leukaemia.
The death toll numbering up will be slow but will be consistant for over a five+ year period.
The principle remains that a dilution of radioactive materials will also decrease its toxicity. With a concentration of 1.4 millicuries per square meter, there's going to be very little in the way of ingestion. In any case, pretty much all credible sources of information about dirty bombs point to the same relative low risk they pose. Do you have any numbers to show how this is an elevated risk?

Coming up with plans to maximize the damage is mind boogling like dusting corn fields with high energy particles and wait for announcing the attack until AFTER harvesting and shipping.
When announced the whole harvest of that season will be deemed unusable subduing the entire American agricultrual industry to their knees.
Never mind that this is a much more far-fetched plan than a dirty bomb due to logistics and complexity, but how would it even work? The necessarily low concentrations of radiation involved aren't going to be much of a health risk, and if a high concentration is present in food, then it's actually not all that hard to detect and quarantine. Anybody going to such weird plans would be better off using anthrax or other easy to use (and transport and hide) toxins.

And even if there little casuality, it the psychologic impact that is important.
That's precisely what would cause the most damage from any such radioactive device. The best defense against this is education on how such radiation poses a danger, and in what conditions it's relatively safe.

[Tri-ring]

The principle remains that a dilution of radioactive materials will also decrease its toxicity. With a concentration of 1.4 millicuries per square meter, there's going to be very little in the way of ingestion. In any case, pretty much all credible sources of information about dirty bombs point to the same relative low risk they pose. Do you have any numbers to show how this is an elevated risk?

No but I do know seeing the victims that nuclear fall out is worst than the actual blast.
What you and the article fail to adimit is the mid/long term damage through long term exposure to radioactive particles lodged into people's lungs and or blood stream.
I do believe that there is a standard amount of radiation humans and considered hazardous exeeding that certain level.


Never mind that this is a much more far-fetched plan than a dirty bomb due to logistics and complexity, but how would it even work? The necessarily low concentrations of radiation involved aren't going to be much of a health risk, and if a high concentration is present in food, then it's actually not all that hard to detect and quarantine. Anybody going to such weird plans would be better off using anthrax or other easy to use (and transport and hide) toxins.

Actually it is not at all far-fetched as you claim since crop dusting is the norm.
You just mix radioactive dust into the pesticide/fertilizer and have the un-witting crop dusters do the rest.
You maybe able to quarentine some but the facility will be deemed hazardous, the crop land that had been dusted will be needed to be shut down due to radioactive contamination with the top soil needed to be replaced and as a result the US corn market will plumet like a rock.
It will make the mad cow fiasco look like a mild case of the flu compared to this if it happens.

[4Tran]

No but I do know seeing the victims that nuclear fall out is worst than the actual blast.
What you and the article fail to adimit is the mid/long term damage through long term exposure to radioactive particles lodged into people's lungs and or blood stream.
I do believe that there is a standard amount of radiation humans and considered hazardous exeeding that certain level.
The effect of nuclear fallout is going to be nothing like that of a dirty bomb. To start with, we're talking about vastly different amounts of radioactive material involved and the size of the respective explosions is nothing alike (to say the least!). On top of that, part of the reason why there were so many casualties from the Nagasaki and Hiroshima fallouts is because the Japanese had no idea of the dangers involved - this is supported by the fact that able-bodied adults died disproportionately from this cause. And if you read over the article, it actually does talk a little about the dangers of ingesting some of the radioactive dust, but the concentrations are so low that there's little threat attendant to it. This position is consistently repeated by just about any source I've ever come accross concerning dirty bombs, so unless you've got something more concrete than speculation, it's hard to take such claims as all that credible.

Actually it is not at all far-fetched as you claim since crop dusting is the norm.
You just mix radioactive dust into the pesticide/fertilizer and have the un-witting crop dusters do the rest.
You maybe able to quarentine some but the facility will be deemed hazardous, the crop land that had been dusted will be needed to be shut down due to radioactive contamination with the top soil needed to be replaced and as a result the US corn market will plumet like a rock.
It will make the mad cow fiasco look like a mild case of the flu compared to this if it happens.
The reasons why I said that this is a far-fetched idea isn't because crop dusting isn't widely used. It's because it's a plan with:

many points of failure
high risk of detection in the execution stage
high risk of detection in the distribution stage
limited gains

Moreover, there's all sorts of toxins which would be far superior for such purposes. Heck, for that matter, it's totally unrealistic to affect more than a couple of adjacent farms, so even the damage would be kept to tiny areas. This is a complete non-threat - the only reason it gets any play is because it's good for an uninformed scare (and even most of those involve more useful agents like anthrax).

The reason the mad cow scenario was so problematic was because nobody knew how widespread it was and because testing for it was both expensive and difficult to perform. Geiger counters are nowhere nearly so difficult to use.

[Demongod86]

This whole OMFG ISRAEL HAS N00KS thing can be analogized quite simply.

If I'm a responsible human being, does it matter that I own all manners of assault weaponry if I haven't ever gone on a killing rampage? No.

However, what happens when you give an ideological maniac a handgun? He'll have a higher chance to shoot someone than the responsible guy with the latest BFG in his closet.

The solution to evil ideological nations with nukes is simple:

If they want to play with fire, remove them overnight. Make an example of the first nation so stupid as to try to use nukes without Free World permission.

[Ledgem]

If I'm a responsible human being, does it matter that I own all manners of assault weaponry if I haven't ever gone on a killing rampage? No.

However, what happens when you give an ideological maniac a handgun? He'll have a higher chance to shoot someone than the responsible guy with the latest BFG in his closet.
The trouble with this analogy is that a nation is not one person, and you're not just denying them a "handgun" - you're denying them a source of energy, something that is arguably necessary for them to prosper and develop as a nation.

[yezhanquan]

The trouble with this analogy is that a nation is not one person, and you're not just denying them a "handgun" - you're denying them a source of energy, something that is arguably necessary for them to prosper and develop as a nation.

That is the boner. It really is not that far in between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. You almost certainly get them both, or not at all.

[Anh_Minh]

This whole OMFG ISRAEL HAS N00KS thing can be analogized quite simply.

If I'm a responsible human being, does it matter that I own all manners of assault weaponry if I haven't ever gone on a killing rampage? No.

However, what happens when you give an ideological maniac a handgun? He'll have a higher chance to shoot someone than the responsible guy with the latest BFG in his closet.

The solution to evil ideological nations with nukes is simple:

If they want to play with fire, remove them overnight. Make an example of the first nation so stupid as to try to use nukes without Free World permission.

Who's this Free World you're talking about? For that matter, what are the evil ideologies?

And how well did this policy work out for you in Iraq (setting aside the fact they didn't even have nukes)?

[Mumitroll]

If I'm a responsible human being, does it matter that I own all manners of assault weaponry if I haven't ever gone on a killing rampage? No.


was Harry S. Truman a responsible human being? why did he go on a killing rampage killing 200,000+ innocent people within 3 days? and why wasn't he hanged right after?


The solution to evil ideological nations with nukes is simple:

If they want to play with fire, remove them overnight. Make an example of the first nation so stupid as to try to use nukes without Free World permission.

lol.. by that logic the US should be removed first. it fits the definition of an evil ideological nation with nukes best, from the world's standpoint (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/15/usa.iran), and moreover is the only one to have actually used them.

[ganbaru]

If they want to play with fire, remove them overnight. Make an example of the first nation so stupid as to try to use nukes without Free World permission.

That is far too oversimplist.
''Free World permission'' ,do no not exist. Even the nation whan would only ripost to nuclear attack with nuclear attack will be criticize by everyone else.

[mike_z]

However, what happens when you give an ideological maniac a handgun?
Why do you think that rulers of Asian countries are ideological maniacs?

[yezhanquan]

was Harry S. Truman a responsible human being? why did he go on a killing rampage killing 200,000+ innocent people within 3 days? and why wasn't he hanged right after?


Please. The nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unusual, but no more cruel than conventional firebombing which the USAF had been using in Germany. The nuking sped things up, but I'm sure liberal firebombing won't be any less cruel/effective.

The US may not be "right" all the time. (Nice job in Indochina, not just Vietnam.) But, I'm still more willing to trust them than Russia.

[mike_z]

>>I'm still more willing to trust them than Russia.

why?

[Mumitroll]

Please. The nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unusual, but no more cruel than conventional firebombing which the USAF had been using in Germany.

lol Kamui above made it a point to show that it was the UK doing the *fire* part (incendiary bombs) of the bombing. the USAF did the regular bombing part.


The nuking sped things up, but I'm sure liberal firebombing won't be any less cruel/effective.


that was Tokyo. and yes it was also pretty effective. the point though still remains that the US under Truman killed more innocent people at once than anyone else in history.


But, I'm still more willing to trust them than Russia.


as the above poster said, why? the US has killed a lot more people than Russia since WWII.

[yezhanquan]

>>I'm still more willing to trust them than Russia.

why?

Because modern US foreign policy works like this for small countries (such as my own): We get into the economic good books, they leave us alone. Cynical, but effective.

[Mumitroll]

Because modern US foreign policy works like this for small countries (such as my own): We get into the economic good books, they leave us alone. Cynical, but effective.

you're just lucky that you dont have any real resources or strategic importance for the US. consider yourself lucky that you dont live in Iraq, Cuba, Nicaragua, Georgia, Serbia, or many other places.

[yezhanquan]

lol Kamui above made it a point to show that it was the UK doing the *fire* part (incendiary bombs) of the bombing. the USAF did the regular bombing part.


that was Tokyo. and yes it was also pretty effective. the point though still remains that the US under Truman killed more innocent people at once than anyone else in history.


as the above poster said, why? the US has killed a lot more people than Russia since WWII.

1) No matter. Why push the blame? Fire bombing works best when regular bombing has "opened" the buildings so that the fire bombs can set off the inferno with the exposed beams. In any case, many British planes were also bankrolled by US loans.

Well:

2) Er, hello? Stalin? Hitler? Mao?

3) See 2). Seriously, do you think the Cultural Revolution has a price tag less than US killings?

you're just lucky that you dont have any real resources or strategic importance for the US. consider yourself lucky that you dont live in Iraq, Cuba, Nicaragua, Georgia, Serbia, or many other places.

Yes, I do consider myself lucky living in Singapore, which just happens to lie on a major global shipping route.

The countries who went "communist": It is tough luck, to a certain extent. Singapore could have become communist. If you haven't guessed by now, I stand on the right wing.

Serbia: Well, they managed to pull the alliance system into the First World War. Studying their modern history is fascinating.

[mike_z]

Because modern US foreign policy works like this for small countries

modern US foreign policy works like this for US.

[yezhanquan]

modern US foreign policy works like this for US.

Then, I thank you for the confirmation.

[Mumitroll]

No matter. Why push the blame? Fire bombing works best when regular bombing has "opened" the buildings so that the fire bombs can set off the inferno with the exposed beams.


coincidentally in Dresden it was done the other way round: firebombing on 12th/14th, regular bombing on 14th/15th.



2) Er, hello? Stalin? Hitler? Mao?

amazingly enough, Stalin did not kill anywhere near the number of people OUTSIDE of Russia/USSR as the US. Hitler did, but thats not my point. Mao - not sure, but the majority of his victims were inside China as well.


3) See 2). Seriously, do you think the Cultural Revolution has a price tag less than US killings?

no, but that was not my statement.


Serbia: Well, they managed to pull the alliance system into the First World War. Studying their modern history is fascinating.

you mean the Erzherzog assassination? that was merely the trigger. the actual *reasons* for WWI were completely different and way more complex.

[mike_z]

The countries who went "communist".

wake up. there is democracy in Russia last 17 years.

1) No matter. Why push the blame? Fire bombing works best when regular bombing has "opened" the buildings so that the fire bombs can set off the inferno with the exposed beams.

year. These russian bastards in 1945 unduly used force, infracted rights of Germany, and got duly elected chancellor to kill himself.

[yezhanquan]

wake up. there is democracy in Russia last 17 years.


That is democracy? Sure, if that is a liberal democracy, then Stalin's my uncle.

@Mumitroll: Oh, didn't realise your post was on "foreigners". Hmmm... And what's Erzherzog? (Oh, it's German for Archduke. Sorry for my ignorance.) While I do know that the assassination of FF was merely a trigger, the Balkans, particularly Serbia, did contribute some steam to it besides the killing.

Stalin's major overseas killing "contribution" was in the Spanish Civil War. Also, for Stalin, do you count Eastern Europe within the USSR? Cause if you don't, the Red Army did a fair bit of killing there themselves. And why distinguish between "within" borders and "outside" borders?

[mike_z]

And why distinguish between "within" borders and "outside" borders?

Because we speak about Russia and USA, not about Stalin.

[ganbaru]

amazingly enough, Stalin did not kill anywhere near the number of people OUTSIDE of Russia/USSR as the US. Hitler did, but thats not my point. Mao - not sure, but the majority of his victims were inside China as well.
...
you mean the Erzherzog assassination? that was merely the trigger. the actual *reasons* for WWI were completely different and way more complex.

1 Why make a difference betweem the people inside and outside their country .
2 It's true. The assasination was just the trigger. The tension betweem the country and the game of alliance did the rest.

By the way, could you enumerate the ressources said to be responsible of for the implication of the US in Bosnia ( if, of course, it the reason was the ressource)?

[yezhanquan]

Because we speak about Russia and USA, not about Stalin.

Well, during much of his reign, Stalin WAS Russia.

[Thingle]

Well, during much of his reign, Stalin WAS Russia.

Not quite. Stalin is Georgian and he led the entire USSR, not just Russia.

[yezhanquan]

Not quite. Stalin is Georgian and he led the entire USSR, not just Russia.

Ah yes. That qualification. The Gerogian who championed Russian chauvinism. Gotta love that one.

[mike_z]

A lot of russians dislile Stalin. Thats why lets discuss only outside politic

[Mumitroll]

That is democracy? Sure, if that is a liberal democracy, then Stalin's my uncle.

sorry, I'm afraid I have a better idea of that than you do. if we discuss the government - Putin, Medvedev, etc - there is no doubt that it is democratically elected and supported by the vast majority of the population (80%+), for reasons *not* dependent on the media. the point is simply that they (mostly) do stuff that people want. the USSR/Russia took extreme economic damage under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Putin reverted a good deal of that, and under him the country has displayed a stable economic growth and increasing well-being for the population. the opposition - Communists, liberals like Yabloko, rightwing nationalists like LDPR - simply sucks ass in comparison.


While I do know that the assassination of FF was merely a trigger, the Balkans, particularly Serbia, did contribute some steam to it besides the killing.


all that was merely a trigger. the fundamental reason for WWI was the interest conflict between various large European states - Germany+Austria/Hungary vs. the Entente, which had been developing for years prior to 1914.


Stalin's major overseas killing "contribution" was in the Spanish Civil War.


incidentally, that was in support of the (elected) Republican government against the coup d'etat of Nazi tyrant Franco - which failed and let to a Fascist regime in Spain. also, what kind of "killing contribution" do you mean? the actions of the NKVD there? from what i know, that was maybe a couple of thousand people, mostly supporters of the Franco Nazis. that's about 100 times less than what Franco's regime did.



Also, for Stalin, do you count Eastern Europe within the USSR? Cause if you don't, the Red Army did a fair bit of killing there themselves.

no, Eastern Europe is of course not within the USSR. but no, the Red Army barely was active there at all after WWII - which was against Nazi Germany - except striking down the uprisings in Hungary and the Czech Republic (2,500 and 72 killed, respectively). I think it's easy to see that's nowhere even close to the millions of US victims in Vietnam, right?



And why distinguish between "within" borders and "outside" borders?

because the talk was about aggression, and how people perceive a certain country in the world. while both Stalin USSR and Mao China were very cruel regimes within their borders, they never came even close to the destruction and deaths caused in other countries by the US or Nazi Germany.


By the way, could you enumerate the ressources said to be responsible of for the implication of the US in Bosnia ( if, of course, it the reason was the ressource)?


you mean the reasons for the bombing of Serbia?


Well, during much of his reign, Stalin WAS Russia.

where'd you get that idea? Stalin was a Georgian, his full name is Iosif Dzhugashvili. he was a cruel paranoid dictator who was neither elected nor wanted by the Russian people (except those brainwashed into it), but succeeded Lenin's lead after the Bolshevik coup in 1917 - and after assassinating or otherwise removing most other political competitors. there was massive public resistance against his rule in the 1930s, which he countered with a massive wave of repressions against the Russian population - totalling 5+ million dead and killing/imprisoning most of the best scientists, military lead and other elite.



Ah yes. That qualification. The Gerogian who championed Russian chauvinism. Gotta love that one.

you just know very little on this.

[mike_z]

sorry for offtop
Mumitroll
where you was born?

und uebrigens sind sie coole Guys, sie wissen, dass Amerika fast immer nicht Recht hat, viele werden Oel und Geld wegen von Amerika getoetet, aber immerhin trauen sie mehr an die USA

[Mumitroll]

i'm originally from St. Petersburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg), but moved to Germany at the age of 13 and have graduated school and university here. i'm bilingual in Russian/German, and follow events both in Russia and in Germany quite closely.

[Reckoner]

that was Tokyo. and yes it was also pretty effective. the point though still remains that the US under Truman killed more innocent people at once than anyone else in history.


I'm sure that invading the island where little kids were being trained to fight with sharp sticks would have caused less deaths. And I am sure that Japan would have wanted to become split in half as the USSR encroached on their little island. While the bombing was not necessarily that humane, it ended the war quickly. The one thing I'll say about the dropping of the bombs, was the first may have been justifiable, but the second wasn't. They did not need to bomb Japan a second time.

And at least the U.S. did a nice job rebuilding countries like Japan and West Germany, I cannot say the same for Russia and East Germany...

Oh and since you seem to be comparing death tolls for the countries in modern history, lets not forget the Soviet-Afghan war...

Over 1 million Afghans were killed.[56] 5 million Afghans fled to Pakistan and Iran, 1/3 of the prewar population of the country. Another 2 million Afghans were displaced within the country. In the 1980s, one out of two refugees in the world was an Afghan.

Along with fatalities were 1.2 million Afghans disabled (mujahideen, government soldiers and noncombatants) and 3 million maimed or wounded (primarily noncombatants).

[mike_z]

lets not forget the US-Afghan war...
lets not forget the US-vietnam war...
lets not forget the US-iraq war...

While the bombing was not necessarily that humane, it ended the war quickly

What do you know about WW2? You are blind. War ended in may 1945. Nuclear attacks were in august!!!! It was a force demonstration.

I am sure that Japan would have wanted to become split in half as the USSR encroached on their little island.

when the USSR encroached on their little island???

[Reckoner]

lets not forget the US-Afghan war...
lets not forget the US-vietnam war...
lets not forget the US-iraq war...


What do you know about WW2? You are blind. War ended in may 1945. Nuclear attacks were in august!!!! It was a force demonstration.

.

when the USSR encroached on their little island???

They had not surrendered, and were not going to anytime soon (not until after the first bomb, hence why I said the second bomb was outrageous). It was not simply a force demonstration.

The USSR was ready to invade Japan in case you did not know by the way, it was probably the biggest reason that the US even dropped the bomb. They wanted to keep them out, and they also wanted to strike fear in Stalin. Japan could have easily become like Germany, but Asia's version.

[yezhanquan]

@Mumitroll: I'm not unaware of what you mentioned on Stalin. (Heck, I have a test on him, and other European dicators in December.)

Yes, he was neither wanted nor elected. But, the fact remains that the Bolsheviks held power after 1917. There was already enough carnage in the Civil War before Lenin's death. After his death, it seemed almost natural that the next leader would emerge from the same group.

On Stalin: He may be Georgian, but you cannot deny that he championed the "Greater Russia" cause. His handling of the Georgian affair in 1922 angered Lenin, who wasn't a Russian chavinist, at least to the same extent.

Also, I take the view that Stalin, like Hitler, was not omnipotent. He provided the set-up of the Purges, but I don't believe he could micromanage every single killing in the Soviet Union. No, the Russian people took the opportunity to settle scores among themselves, save themselves...

If there is one difference between Hitler and Stalin, it was that Stalin continually purged the purgers.

When I said that Stalin was Russia/the USSR, I meant that he took it onto himself to speak for the peoples in the country he bent with his will. He may not be qualified to do so, but I have difficulty pinpointing another political figure from that era to represent the USSR.

Franco was not a "Nazi" tyrant. He was a tyrant, but he was not a Nazi in the vein of Hitler. The Right of the period was a whole array of groups who had different aims. Probably the only thing which unite them was the desire to destroy the elected government.

Franco was greatly assisted by Italy and Germany, but after he took power, he didn't claim to be the old sweeping out the new, which is a main point in fascism. If anything, he claimed to restore the "old" order.

Note that I used the term "liberal democracy". Russia may be a democracy today (which I didn't dispute). But, I don't think it is a liberal democracy.

The Balkans had a big part to play in the agitation between Russia and Austria-Hungary prior to WWI.

@Reckoner: I personally think that the second bomb was needed. Heck, after the second bomb, the Japanese High Command still had the will to fight on. It was Hirohito who thought that it was enough. And the High Command even mounted a last-minute coup attempt to reverse the decision.

[Shadow Kira01]

@Reckoner: I personally think that the second bomb was needed. Heck, after the second bomb, the Japanese High Command still had the will to fight on. It was Hirohito who thought that it was enough. And the High Command even mounted a last-minute coup attempt to reverse the decision.

So, people actually don't regret using the atomic bomb after the first drop and witnessing the terror of humanity erased by mass destructive weapons? Of course, the High Command had the will to fight on, especially when their enemies don't have any mercy on innocent civilian lives. Notice that the atomic bombs were targetting civilians mainly, not the military. However, since the mercy of the civilian lives were at the hands of the inhuman atomic bombers, there was no choice but to surrender and thus, Emperor Hirohito made the right choice.

Knowing the tragedy of the atomic bombs, yet people still continue to mass produce nukes in modern times. It is truly pitiful.

[Tri-ring]

To my knowledge dropping the two bombs was more of a political choice rather than a military one.
The US military knew that Japan did not have any will left to fight back when they were doing the carpet bombing since there were no interceptor fcoming after them and had little/no resistance. Japan also tried to negotiate a peace treaty through the Swiss in June which was completely ignored by the allied forces.
The US could have simply created a blockade for 6 month and finish off whatever was left. The Japanese urban population at this point were eating weeds and roots and did not have enough oil to maintain even bare necessities.
The reason why they didn't do this was because the Soviets were closing in. The US did not want to share Japan like Germany so they dropped the bomb finishing it off before Soviets could mount a real invasion.
The reason for dropping two to my understanding was to test the difference in design, little boy dropped on Hiroshima was a Gun-type Uranium 235 bomb and the US military knew it will go off because of it's simple design.
On the other hand, Fat boy dropped on Nagasaki was an implosion type Plutonium bomb and although they tested it in Los Alamos the military was not sure if it will detonate in real life conditions being dropped from a B-29 so they did a live amo test on Japan.
The US science team also wanted to know if there was any difference in damage and radiation exposure on humans between the difference in design and material.

[yezhanquan]

So, people actually don't regret using the atomic bomb after the first drop and witnessing the terror of humanity erased by mass destructive weapons? Of course, the High Command had the will to fight on, especially when their enemies don't have any mercy on innocent civilian lives. Notice that the atomic bombs were targetting civilians mainly, not the military. However, since the mercy of the civilian lives were at the hands of the inhuman atomic bombers, there was no choice but to surrender and thus, Emperor Hirohito made the right choice.

Knowing the tragedy of the atomic bombs, yet people still continue to mass produce nukes in modern times. It is truly pitiful.

Civilians becoming valid targets was a relatively new item on the list, but once it was put on the list, all armies didn't want to take it off. Civilians are the backbone to any army. Break them and you break the enemy, or so the theory goes.

[Shadow Kira01]

Civilians becoming valid targets was a relatively new item on the list, but once it was put on the list, all armies didn't want to take it off. Civilians are the backbone to any army. Break them and you break the enemy, or so the theory goes.

By concept, you are correct. However, the ones who drop the atomic bombs were from a democratic society where human rights are well-acknowledged and that makes it a little different. Obviously, any military body in this world don't really care much about civilian lives, all they care about is the success and outcome of the mission given to them by their superiors.

[mike_z]

The USSR was ready to invade Japan in case you did not know by the way, it was probably the biggest reason that the US even dropped the bomb.

where you read it? in newspapers?

Nagasaki was an implosion type Plutonium bomи
*rectification* Uranium 238

Civilians becoming valid targets was a relatively new item on the list, but once it was put on the list, all armies didn't want to take it off. Civilians are the backbone to any army. Break them and you break the enemy, or so the theory goes.
no comments kill yourself

[Tri-ring]

where you read it? in newspapers?
Nope, in the history books.

Kurile Landing Operation (August 18, 1945 - September 1, 1945) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria)

*rectification* Uranium 238

Wrong again,

"Fat Man" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_man#Technology) was an implosion-type weapon using plutonium 239. A subcritical sphere of plutonium was placed in the center of a hollow sphere of high explosive.

[ganbaru]

. Obviously, any military body in this world don't really care much about civilian lives, all they care about is the success and outcome of the mission given to them by their superiors.

Somr army are worse than others, after all killing civilians waiste ammunition and get bad Public Relation. But if they can be call 'Terrorists'' like the russian did in Afganistan.

[mg1942]

Obviously, any military body in this world don't really care much about civilian lives, all they care about is the success and outcome of the mission given to them by their superiors.

What the heck is the Geneva conventions for....

[yezhanquan]

By concept, you are correct. However, the ones who drop the atomic bombs were from a democratic society where human rights are well-acknowledged and that makes it a little different. Obviously, any military body in this world don't really care much about civilian lives, all they care about is the success and outcome of the mission given to them by their superiors.

The racism of the Pacific War (on both sides) was very well-documented. It has to be read to be believed.

What the heck is the Geneva conventions for....

Hint hint: Hitler refused to sign them.

[ganbaru]

The racism of the Pacific War (on both sides) was very well-documented. It has to be read to be believed.
Most of this racism was from ignorance. That waht you get when both sides are from culture so differente. And the superiory complex didn't help.

[Tri-ring]

Most of this racism was from ignorance. That waht you get when both sides are from culture so differente. And the superiory complex didn't help.

I think it was more about arrogance, financial greed and sense of maintaining the status quo then anything else.
Japan petitioned for human equality at the Paris Peace Conference which was over ruled by the British and the US.
Japan was also pushed by the US with denial of the counter proposal with other provocations which led to the infamous ultimatum, the Hull note.

For the record I am not saying Japan was purely an innocent victim since she had her own political problems after the 30's when the military highjacked the government and the Emperor was impotent to take more aggresive action against the military but it was not Japan's fault alone that led to the bloody war and every party had blood on their hands.

[Mumitroll]

I'm sure that invading the island where little kids were being trained to fight with sharp sticks would have caused less deaths. And I am sure that Japan would have wanted to become split in half as the USSR encroached on their little island. While the bombing was not necessarily that humane, it ended the war quickly. The one thing I'll say about the dropping of the bombs, was the first may have been justifiable, but the second wasn't. They did not need to bomb Japan a second time.

neither the first nor the second time were needed in order to simply defeat Japan, and certainly the destruction of cities was not needed. thats the overwhelming consensus of non-US historians today.


Oh and since you seem to be comparing death tolls for the countries in modern history, lets not forget the Soviet-Afghan war...

i'm just saying the US is at the top for post-WWII. the USSR war in Afghanistan was certainly in many ways similar to the US war in Vietnam though.



The USSR was ready to invade Japan in case you did not know by the way, it was probably the biggest reason that the US even dropped the bomb. They wanted to keep them out, and they also wanted to strike fear in Stalin. Japan could have easily become like Germany, but Asia's version.

yes. now you are coming close to the real reason. it was not primarily to end the war. it had little military significance - especially with that choice of targets. it was, before everything else, a power demonstration to Stalin.



Also, I take the view that Stalin, like Hitler, was not omnipotent. He provided the set-up of the Purges, but I don't believe he could micromanage every single killing in the Soviet Union. No, the Russian people took the opportunity to settle scores among themselves, save themselves...


of course he did not "micro-manage" everything. he had many other people to do that - like Lavrentiy Beria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria). it's an undeniable fact though that he was the single holder of power (or, more accurately, became it after he cleaned out all the potential rivals like Kirov, Bukharin, Tuchachevsky, Trotsky, etc) and fully responsible for the so-called "purges" which resulted in the deaths of millions.

your view of "Russian people taking the opportunity to settle scores" is more or less nonsense. the idea of the purges encouraged telling on people who were supposed to be an "enemy of the people". imagine yourself in such a situation. where any asshole, if he doesnt like you for some reason, can send an anonymous note to the NKVD saying that you said anti-Soviet things. and that would be enough to land you in a Siberian work camp. it's enough if 1 person out of 100 is such an asshole to ruin the lives of many people in such an environment. there is a word in Russian for such people - "stukach" - and thats a very derogatory word.


Franco was not a "Nazi" tyrant. He was a tyrant, but he was not a Nazi in the vein of Hitler.


in terms of his basic political stance Franco was a Fascist. whether you call his regime Nazi or not is more of a term thing - in any case it was a cruel, hardline nationalist one sympathizing with the Nazis and providing them troops.


Note that I used the term "liberal democracy". Russia may be a democracy today (which I didn't dispute). But, I don't think it is a liberal democracy.


do you think the US today is a liberal democracy?



Civilians becoming valid targets was a relatively new item on the list, but once it was put on the list, all armies didn't want to take it off. Civilians are the backbone to any army. Break them and you break the enemy, or so the theory goes.

terrorism theory you mean? what you described is what commonly got people sentenced to death and executed at places like Den Haag or Nürnberg.

[mike_z]

Hint hint: Hitler refused to sign them.
German singed Hague convention.
Mumitroll
интересно, они познания об истории берут из газет?

[ganbaru]

terrorism theory you mean? what you described is what commonly got people sentenced to death and executed at places like Den Haag or Nürnberg.
Am I wrong or even back at Clausewitz, civil area could be seen as military targets. From the time of the Mass production , civilians was the ones building the war material and potential low-qualified troop. It was the time of the bigger the army, the better.

[mike_z]

Am I wrong or even back at Clausewitz, civil area could be seen as military targets. From the time of the Mass production , civilians was the ones building the war material and potential low-qualified troop. It was the time of the bigger the army, the better.

If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him. (c)

[yezhanquan]

@Mumitroll: The US today may not be an full liberal democracy, but I wouldn't mind Singapore taking a few steps in that direction.

As for the Soviet ratting, 'derogatory' doesn't mean it didn't exist.

Franco being fascist: I sure hope my lecturer wouldn't ask this question in my exam. Then again, due to a little screw-up, our part on Spain was supposed to be confined with the Spanish Civil War.

The nukes: Add to "show of power" "scientific curiousity". After spending a ton of money on the stuff, they needed to see some action.

[mg1942]

do you think the US today is a liberal democracy?

In our dreams... and looks like USA is set to become a complete nanny state like UK/EU/Australia:rolleyes:

[yezhanquan]

In our dreams... and looks like USA is set to become a complete nanny state like UK/EU/Australia:rolleyes:

Funny. I thought my Singapore was the nanny state.

[Lathdrinor]

To my knowledge dropping the two bombs was more of a political choice rather than a military one.
The US military knew that Japan did not have any will left to fight back when they were doing the carpet bombing since there were no interceptor fcoming after them and had little/no resistance. Japan also tried to negotiate a peace treaty through the Swiss in June which was completely ignored by the allied forces.
The US could have simply created a blockade for 6 month and finish off whatever was left. The Japanese urban population at this point were eating weeds and roots and did not have enough oil to maintain even bare necessities.
The reason why they didn't do this was because the Soviets were closing in. The US did not want to share Japan like Germany so they dropped the bomb finishing it off before Soviets could mount a real invasion.
The reason for dropping two to my understanding was to test the difference in design, little boy dropped on Hiroshima was a Gun-type Uranium 235 bomb and the US military knew it will go off because of it's simple design.
On the other hand, Fat boy dropped on Nagasaki was an implosion type Plutonium bomb and although they tested it in Los Alamos the military was not sure if it will detonate in real life conditions being dropped from a B-29 so they did a live amo test on Japan.
The US science team also wanted to know if there was any difference in damage and radiation exposure on humans between the difference in design and material.

The US did indeed want to secure a quick victory due to the Soviet advance. There was also the concern of domestic support for the war - a quick victory was deemed necessary (over a long duration siege/blockade) to end the war on favorable terms without inciting widespread unrest at home.

However, I think it's an exaggeration to say that Japan did not have "any will" to fight, left. Given the fanaticism of the Japanese military, if the Emperor did not give the word to surrender, they might very well have fought on. And as for a peaceful settlement, it was believed that Japan wanted a peace accord that would allow them to retain their empire or, at least, "save face." That, to the US and its allies, was unacceptable.

It is necessary to see the atomic bombing of Japan in the context of the general brutality of World War II. Yes, it was tragic, and yes, it was wrong (though, as others have said, one cannot easily predict how many lives would've been lost if either the US or the Soviets invaded). But civilian targeting is part of total war, and World War II was a total war. The level of dehumanization reached disgusting levels during the course of the war, which led, in part if not in full, to the atrocities committed. The Japanese certainly didn't spare much in their invasions of China and Southeast Asia, so in some sense, they got what they dished out (compare Japan's wartime civilian casualties to China's, if you don't believe me).

The best that can be said about World War II is that it showed humanity the true depravity of total war and fascism, which has led to an era of (relative) peace and liberalism. There are also important lessons for how to manage emerging powers (Japan and Germany were emerging powers at the time), which I hope the current batch of established powers took to heart.

If not - if humanity fails to learn from history - then, as Einstein said, "I don't know how man will fight World War III, but I do know how they will fight World War IV; with sticks and stones."

[Shadow Kira01]

Considering that history is written in the perspective of the winners, regardless of the war. It is entirely possible that the numbers of casualties caused by the losers are highly inflated, while the number of casualties on the loser's side are deflated. This does not apply to WWII only, but to every war that occurred throughout history.

Let's take the Vietnam War as an example. When the numbers of American soldiers die, they were considered by the American government at that time as war heroes and the survivors as war veterans. On the other hand, the civilians were killed by the military were considered as the same-level as the guerillas, whether it be young children or the elderly, it did not matter. In terms of inflation, by considering innocent civilians as soldiers would definitely increase the kill count by the winning military forces. Thus, it is actually difficult to determine the actual number of casualties for each and every war, regardless of the country or situation.

[Lathdrinor]

That is certainly true for exact numbers, which is why most statistics have an error margin. As for your Vietnam example, I should point out that at the time is not the same as ex post facto. People do go back and reevaluate their numbers, which is why we are more aware today of what actually happened.

[Demongod86]

nIt's enough if 1 person out of 100 is such an asshole to ruin the lives of many people in such an environment. there is a word in Russian for such people - "stukach" - and thats a very derogatory word.



I believe the word you're looking for is "svolatch".

As for why nukes are still produced today, so they're used as bargaining chips and to put fear into the hearts and minds of enemies. And when the fear factor stops being significant, we just might drop one to show we're willing to use them.

[Shadow Kira01]

As for why nukes are still produced today, so they're used as bargaining chips and to put fear into the hearts and minds of enemies. And when the fear factor stops being significant, we just might drop one to show we're willing to use them.

I know the theory behind the deterrent issue, but still.. If every nuclear warhead producing nation practice and work hard on their diplomatic skills, there wouldn't be a need to show their will to use it. After all, the reason why countries built so many nukes in the first place is their will to actually use it someday, not like they are wasting money for no reason. Even so, it would be so much better if the world will not go into a war involving nuclear warheads. Perhaps, the ones who support the idea of utilizing nukes as bargaining chips would consider the anti-nuke crowd, such as myself as wishful thinking. It does not matter.

[Mumitroll]

интересно, они познания об истории берут из газет?

из газет, телевизора, того чему их учат в школе, итд. проблема с этим состоит в том, что это все передает реальность очень искаженно во всем что касается СССР (по историческим причинам, т.к. была "империя зла" в холодной войне) и России (по инерции).



Am I wrong or even back at Clausewitz, civil area could be seen as military targets. From the time of the Mass production , civilians was the ones building the war material and potential low-qualified troop. It was the time of the bigger the army, the better.

obviously, the tradition of making civilians military targets is as old as war itself. it doesnt take much imagination or intelligence to come up with it. take for example famous sieges of old, like Troja, or tactics of the Mongols under various Khans.

its just that nowadays that is considered terrorism. and judged as such - when the "right" people do it. i.e. Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, or Osama bin Laden. when a H.S. Truman or G.W. Bush - or even their proxy underlings like Suharto - do it, on the contrary, it's all for the greater good.


@Mumitroll: The US today may not be an full liberal democracy, but I wouldn't mind Singapore taking a few steps in that direction.


you wouldnt mind living in a state where the police can arrest and imprison you - legally - without reason on most of its territory? where you can subsequently be tortured for years without any legal process? where people, with no legal reason, can eavesdrop on your phone conversations, break into your home and search it, look at your medical records - all legally? where press freedom and objectivity is largely an empty slogan - its press is as about far from being free and objective as the USSR's Pravda - and the spectrum of political coverage on TV is confined to a ridiculously narrow band? where elections are a joke - with people having the choice of two parties, both of which are very far to the right of the majority of the population, and deliberately running a policy counter to what the majority wants?

I'd think twice about that.


As for the Soviet ratting, 'derogatory' doesn't mean it didn't exist.

so what? take the US in McCarthy times, or Germany in the early days of the NSDAP government. both had its fair share of the same. its not different in most other brainwashed societies with a propaganda system.



It is necessary to see the atomic bombing of Japan in the context of the general brutality of World War II. Yes, it was tragic, and yes, it was wrong (though, as others have said, one cannot easily predict how many lives would've been lost if either the US or the Soviets invaded)

you know what I dont like about this? this "context of the general brutality of World War II". first of all, where exactly was the US target of this "general brutality" to give it a "right" to be like that as well? in Pearl Harbor? an offshore military base? this argument might - maybe - have some validity if it was the USSR to firebomb and nuke cities, since it had experienced immensely large civilian losses. but the US?...


If not - if humanity fails to learn from history - then, as Einstein said, "I don't know how man will fight World War III, but I do know how they will fight World War IV; with sticks and stones."


yea that one is a good line. every American school should prominently display it in every classroom, or something. maybe it would help.



I believe the word you're looking for is "svolatch".

"сволочь" is just a generic curseword, while I was meaning something specific to the act of ratting on someone.



I know the theory behind the deterrent issue, but still.. If every nuclear warhead producing nation practice and work hard on their diplomatic skills, there wouldn't be a need to show their will to use it.

thats a very vague formulation. reality is much more crisp and clear. nukes, for most states, are primarily a method of defense against some other state which is a) larger and more powerful or b) has nukes already. nobody builds nukes with the intent of using them (except maybe the US). at least nobody known to me.

nuke-building history started with Nazi Germany. the US nuke program was famously suggested by Einstein in several letters to Roosevelt, who was afraid that otherwise the Nazis would have nukes before the US would - so it was basically a preemptive defense (although today they have pretty much lost that function for the US since it is clearly on top in terms of regular military power anyway). USSR started its nuke program to keep up with the US and also as a method of defense. UK and France followed to have a method of defense against the USSR. China followed to be on par with the US and USSR. etc. most recent cases - for Israel its a defense against Arab states, for North Korea it is defense against the US, for Iran its a defense against the US and Israel.


Perhaps, the ones who support the idea of utilizing nukes as bargaining chips would consider the anti-nuke crowd, such as myself as wishful thinking. It does not matter.


the problem is not so much in utilizing nukes for bargaining. it's when states go into direct military action involving or being directed against other states with nukes. that is, to put it mildly, very unwise. to put it less mildly, it is LUNACY. and may ultimately result in the deaths of most of us. and yet it happened at least twice - once in Cuba in 1962, and once 3 months ago in Georgia. i must say, i really, REALLY did not like the events 3 months ago.

[yezhanquan]

At least in the McCarthy years, you don't "disappear" permanently, and the ratting under the Nazis continued even after they're well-established. That was how the Gestapo earned its reputation.

All the "without reason" scenarios: You must be someone to get selected for this sort of stuff. Unless the departments like doing random stuff. Besides, after looking/listening to my stuff, what are they going to do about it? Comment to their colleagues that oh, I'm discussing anime stuff with my friend? Maybe, they'll contact my insurance company to notify that I'm hiding an illness? Don't forget where I'm living. The second part of those lines is my reality. Ok, maybe except the "policy counter to people's wishes" part. I think my local press is objective. Others obviously don't agree, and certainly, it's not free.

[ganbaru]

you know what I dont like about this? this "context of the general brutality of World War II". first of all, where exactly was the US target of this "general brutality" to give it a "right" to be like that as well? in Pearl Harbor? an offshore military base? this argument might - maybe - have some validity if it was the USSR to firebomb and nuke cities, since it had experienced immensely large civilian losses. but the US?... I fail to get this point. How the loose of their own civilians should give a country the ''right'' to do otherwise? ( It well know than the USSR didn't hold back when they were going toward Berlin)
Insted of ''context of general brutality'' think of the concept of ''the whole country at war''.

By the way Mumitroll and Mike_Z , why are you ''speaking'' russina on this forum? Self-censoring or what?

[mike_z]

By the way Mumitroll and Mike_Z , why are you ''speaking'' russina on this forum? Self-censoring or what?

It is a state secret. We cant divulge it.


вот так вота. пусть хекса разбирают
6E 75 63 6C 65 61 72 20 69 73 20 63 6F 6D 62 61 74 2D 72 65 61 64 79
стукни кстати в асю первые шесть цифр отсюда 22 56 66 CB FA 17

[4Tran]

All right, this has gone on long enough. This topic is supposed to be about the benefits and disadvantages of the spread of nuclear power, so take all of this talk about World War II and what not elsewhere. I'll delete any further posts that deviate from this topic, so consider this a warning.

On a different note, the discussion on Truman's decision to drop the nuclear bombs is quite interesting, and it'd make good fodder for a separate thread.

Also,
Please Note: Since this is an English forum we ask that all communication be in English.

[Mumitroll]

By the way Mumitroll and Mike_Z , why are you ''speaking'' russina on this forum? Self-censoring or what?


both was marked as spoilers. if you cant read it, don't. I can also translate it though:

"I wonder, do they learn history from newspapers?"

"From newspapers, TV, what they are taught at schools, etc. The problem with it is that all that represents reality in a very warped way regarding everything concerning the USSR (since it was the "evil empire" in the Cold War) and Russia (out of inertia)."


All right, this has gone on long enough. This topic is supposed to be about the benefits and disadvantages of the spread of nuclear power, so take all of this talk about World War II and what not elsewhere. I'll delete any further posts that deviate from this topic, so consider this a warning.

you are amusing me, to be honest, like many other moderators of similar forums. why do you think that a discussion about the benefits and disadvantages of the spread of nuclear power, in a thread called "Nuclear Power and Foreign Policy", must be strictly limited to posts having "benefits and disadvantages of nuclear power" in them? want to demonstrate moderator skills? for example, the question why the US under Truman dropped the bombs on Japan, whether it had the right to do so, and whether it can realistically occur again today, is of MAJOR importance to the thread opener question.

but anyway... i'll just open another thread and will name it generically enough to include discussions about ANYTHING even remotely related, be it benefits and disadvantages of nuclear power, military implications of having or not having nuclear weapons, historical reasons for that, and so on.

[4Tran]

both was marked as spoilers. if you cant read it, don't. I can also translate it though:
There's two reasons for the English-only rule. The first is to facilitate communications, and the second is that non-English posts can be impossible to moderate. This is a non-negotiable rule.

you are amusing me, to be honest, like many other moderators of similar forums. why do you think that a discussion about the benefits and disadvantages of the spread of nuclear power, in a thread called "Nuclear Power and Foreign Policy", must be strictly limited to posts having "benefits and disadvantages of nuclear power" in them?
Because the OP is not asking for a history lesson, and because the thread drift is obscuring the discussion so much that the original intent of the thread is otherwise unviable.

for example, the question why the US under Truman dropped the bombs on Japan, whether it had the right to do so, and whether it can realistically occur again today, is of MAJOR importance to the thread opener question.
It may or may not be relevant, but it doesn't deserve to completely overwhelm the OP.

By the way, this kind of post would be better if it were in a PM.

[Mumitroll]

There's two reasons for the English-only rule. The first is to facilitate communications, and the second is that non-English posts can be impossible to moderate. This is a non-negotiable rule.


I wouldnt normally write anything in other languages, but the guy asked in Russian so I replied. but btw, you have a lot of posts with Japanese text to delete then...


Because the OP is not asking for a history lesson, and because the thread drift is obscuring the discussion so much that the original intent of the thread is otherwise unviable.

the problem with that is that you arent even able to discuss this topic with any degree of seriousness without knowing the corresponding history - at least superficially. it's a common attitude on net forums though.. especially US ones.. paraphrased: "history? what history? last week? thats ancient, go away with that." such "I-think-X you-think-Y but-nobody-of-us-has-any-real-clue" discussions are funny to look at, but barely more than that.



It may or may not be relevant, but it doesn't deserve to completely overwhelm the OP.


perhaps you are right. I am yet to see any objection from the OP though. if there were one I would immediately comply.


By the way, this kind of post would be better if it were in a PM.


I already have several ongoing private discussions with posters here who all ask more or less similar questions and need similar information. I think it's better for such a discussion to be public. less work for me.

[4Tran]

I wouldnt normally write anything in other languages, but the guy asked in Russian so I replied. but btw, you have a lot of posts with Japanese text to delete then...
A special allowance is made for Japanese because of the nature of this forum.